Rule of Rose
by OniJack
Summary: Novelization of the game. Currently working on the Goat Sisters chapter of the game -5/11- . Big props to the Rule of Rose Mysteries blog, from which I'll probably be borrowing ideas or theories. Read and Review at your leisure.
1. March 1930: The Little Princess

**March 1930  
The Little Princess**

**1**

"Once upon a time, there was a precious little girl. Her friend, the Princess of the Red Rose, was always at her side... Then one day, her mummy and daddy died suddenly, and the poor little girl was sent away to a strange house..."

That's the first thing the unlucky girl heard. But it wasn't what woke her up. No, that was the rocking of the Earth. Or at least, what she first thought was the rocking of the Earth. It turned out to be the rocking of the old bus as it made its way along an unpaved road during the darkness of the night. Yes, the rhythmic up and down of rolling wheels on uneven dirt and the pounding of her heart in her arm. She had fallen asleep against her suitcase and her arm had fallen asleep with her. Somewhere below consciousness, she felt her heart beat and the Earth move together in a strange unison. It felt good. But even so, she wasn't yet awake. Not fully.

No, what finally woke her up was the next thing she heard.

"Jennifer. Jennifer!" There was that same voice again. A small voice and a big voice all in one. An _annoying _voice. It was a boy's voice. And it was drawing her away from her slumber. "Play with me Jennifer! Read the story! Please, read the story!"

Jennifer opened her eyes and there was a small boy standing there. A little boy with golden brown hair and a bowed head, and in tiny little outstretched hands, he held a pile of yellowing pages styled into a book. Above him, a moth circled one of the passenger cabin's ceiling light sources and it seemed that they must be the only patrons on this late night ride.

"What happens next?" He was very insistent.

Jennifer reached out for the book, almost instinctively, and the little boy pulled the first page open for her before releasing it into her eager hands.

Blank. Only blank pages greeted her.

Confused, she asked the little boy, "What's this?"

But the boy did not respond. He continued looking down at the floor as the bus eased out and, with a long winded groan of rust and grime, came to a stop. Then the boy was gone – running down the length of the bus and disappearing out of the vehicle's door. Jennifer caught sight of the boy as he ran outside, past the bus' left side windows, and although she pleaded for him to stop, his figure disappeared from sight.

She tried to pursue him. Bewildered, she followed his steps off the bus and managed to spy his momentary form as he disappeared up a dark trail which extended into the woods. And when she heard the bus' doors pull shut behind her, she feared she might have made a terrible mistake in getting so caught up in the moment and rushing off. The thought of her suitcase still onboard propelled her to take two or three shaky steps in the bus' direction as it took off without her but she gave up the chase right away. She had never been very athletic and the thought of chasing after a speeding automobile in the cold and darkness of the night scared her.

_ ~Suddenly, the girl was all alone.~ _

Or something like that. That sounded about right – at least dramatically speaking, and Jennifer had always been needlessly dramatic. When she was scared; when she was alone; when she was hurt; she liked to... what? Give her thoughts a narrative voice? As if she were a character in a story? A character in a book? Yes. This was familiar. This was comforting.

~_And so, the story begins.~_

But it was also more than merely familiar, she was suddenly struck with a horrible sense of déjà vu. Jennifer looked around at the poorly lit bus stop she found herself at. It was a tiny little thing at the side of the road. There was a weathered bench near the bus stop and the sole source of dim lighting was a pale lamp atop a pole. Uncomfortably, she couldn't shake the feeling in the back of her mind that she had been here before.

_ ~A mysterious, unthinkable, filthy tale. However, the young girl, Jennifer, had no choice but to surrender to the unsettling predicament...~_

Yes. This _was _familiar. But Jennifer couldn't remember why it should be so. Why it should seem like this was not the first time she had thought this particular narration. Why it should seem like this was not the first time she had gotten off the bus at this dreary stop, having forgotten her suitcase...

_ ~Oh, what an unlucky girl...~_

Unlucky girl. Yes, that's right. Jennifer remembered now. That was her. Always her. That's the name she had given herself after her parents... After her parents...

After her parents..._ what?_

What was it? She couldn't remember... but it was how she always thought of herself. For as long as she could remember (and that wasn't saying much at this point), she had been the unlucky girl.

The unlucky girl in the story of her life.

The chirping of crickets was all she could hear then. But there was something soothing in that ever-present background noise. It calmed her bubbling paranoia slightly and she steadied herself with a few deep breaths.

Jennifer stopped.

For fifteen seconds, the unlucky girl counted the chirps of the crickets. _One... two... three... four... five..._ Fifteen seconds passed like that, and Jennifer had counted twenty-eight chirps. Then she added thirty-seven. She came up with sixty-five. So it must be sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit, give or take a few. So it was pretty brisk – Jennifer hugged her arms to herself.

It was something someone had taught her long ago... A nice man who had taken her in after...

_After what?_

Jennifer pushed the thought aside.

Jennifer looked up and, in the space of the road between a blanket of green foliage, she saw a shining silver moon floating amidst a dance of blue and purple clouds. That peaceful scene also helped. But only a little and not nearly enough.

She looked back at the bus stop sign and read the name of her stop.

"Bus Stop: Rose Garden Orphanage."

And that sent a shiver down her spine.

For a long time, she considered following after the long gone bus after all. But the road it had taken was now obscured in the darkness of the trees that surrounded it and her mind kept replaying an image of her walking into that blackness and winding up walking in a circle and ending up exactly where she hat started.

And that terrified her.

Instead, she turned her attention to the trail the boy had disappeared into. It was a beaten path in terrible shape, along its sides ran white picket fencing – at one time it may have stood firm and clean but now it sat as a dilapidated mess, falling apart in some segments and completely fallen in others.

The unlucky girl decided to walk in that direction. The incessant sound of the crickets compelled her forward; her confusion compelled her forward; her fear compelled her forward; but most of all, Jennifer decided that she wanted to see that little boy again. There was something about him. Something that she hated. Something that she loved. He had gone up that trail. So she would go up that trail.

Darkness had never frightened her, but being alone always did the trick.

So she followed the beaten trail as it curled around a strange hill. Having left the bus stop behind her, she now had to rely on the moon for her only source of light, but it was good enough for her to avoid tripping on the odd hole or fallen branch on the road. Eventually, the aging picket fence also disappeared from her sides, forcing her to trust the dirt path she followed, but a corner of her mind still insisted she must now be wandering the forest, lost. The occasional segment of picket fence would appear on the side and this would abate her worries. But only a little bit.

Finally something new appeared on the path; the dirt road split into a fork that trailed two directions. To the right, picket fencing traced a path that turned downwards and out of sight. To the left, the road remained fence-less but it seemed almost to begin an ascent upwards. Against the fork, there was something that looked a lot like a sign.

"Left: Rose..." the unlucky girl whispered aloud but it was all she could make out. Half the sign was broken off.

Before Jennifer had enough time to worry about this too much, she was interrupted by the pitiful whining of an old friend.

**2**

_ ~As the girl approached the sign, she heard a dog's bark. It sounded strangely familiar to her, and beckoned her to come...~ _

Yes, that seemed appropriate for what she was feeling then. Each time she heard the dog's low whining sound echo through the air, she felt something small and sharp dig into her heart. It hurt terribly as it clung to the air and the whining just wouldn't _stop. _

The small boy temporarily forgotten, Jennifer decided to find the source of this new noise. The unlucky girl descended on the path to the right, letting her hand trail on the picket fencing as she walked; the trees were denser here and even the moonlight wasn't enough to ensure she wouldn't accidentally trip. The old fencing had a grimy feel and when Jennifer checked her hand, she found it coated with dark dirt and dust. Strangely, even more so than the path in disrepair she had just walked, this area had a sense of long abandonment. The path opened up into a small clearing at the base of the hill. Here, a small wooden building emerged to the left—a shack. The desperate whining of the dog only strengthened as Jennifer approached and now she could make out what sounded like the occasional sound of claws digging into wood.

Something was trying to get out. Something wanted desperately to see her.

The unlucky girl approached the shack. It was an aged looking thing; on part of the front, a green wiry plant had latched on and begun to spread along mildewy planks that looked battered by time.

There was an old padlock on the door, but on closer inspection, Jennifer found that it was not clasped shut. She pulled it off and opened the door, rusty hinges wheezing in protest, and revealed a dark, unlit interior.

It was very dark in the shack, but even so, Jennifer could tell right away that there was no dog in here. There hadn't been a dog here for a long time. Not anymore.

The incessant whining had ceased. The chirping of crickets was again the only sound she could make out, and she was very much alone.

The unlucky girl stepped further into the blackness of the shack. She peered intently around the room and could make out a few key details – there was something that looked like a scarecrow missing its head in one corner and a dilapidated cart laying on its side near the opposite corner. The shack seemed to be a storeroom for gardening equipment since there was a watering can on the floor and even a few farming tools like a hoe and shovel leaning against the wall. There was a large cloth draped across one half of the room, tied to a center wooden pillar and beneath it...

_Beneath it..._

Jennifer leaned over. There was something lying there, a little slip of paper tied to a dog collar.

The unlucky girl slipped the paper off the collar. Scribbled on the paper in heavy ink were the words "BOARDING PASS" accompanied by a picture of a fish. "RED CRAYON ARISTOCRATS" was written on the edge of the paper, under a dotted line. Underneath that was a familiar red shape reminiscent of a rose.

Jennifer stashed the paper away in her pocket. It held no interest for her; just an insignificant scrap of paper with a drawing on it (but the fact that she bothered to hold unto it at all probably meant it held a little more interest in her subconscious than even she was really aware of). The dog collar on the other hand...

It was a tiny little thing, orange-red leather and a buckle. But Jennifer knew this buckle. She couldn't remember when, but she knew she had held it before. She turned it, and looked on the underside. There she found the name "Brown" written into the leather, just as she knew she would. She remembered that she had written it there, but even so, she could not remember when she had done so...

Someone laughed. A little boy's snicker of a laugh. A noise full of petty little small emotions that reflexively made her flinch.

And then she heard the dog's whimper again.

And then all Jennifer knew was terror.

This wasn't like the whimpering from before. Before, that pitiful noise had been one of hope and excitement. Now, all it conveyed was pain and hurt. The noises came from outside. And they were gone almost as soon as she had heard them, and still they had a profound effect upon Jennifer. In an instant, she was almost in tears.

And yet she did not know why this should be so.

The unlucky girl turned around and lunged out of the shack. There was an emotion like fear and panic bubbling somewhere near the pit of her stomach and it propelled her feet forward. Out of the rickety shack and there were footsteps. She almost missed it, but for a fleeting moment, she saw a tiny form disappear up the dirt trail. The white shirt giving away that it was the small boy from the bus.

Could he be the one who had snickered?

Could he be why the dog had given that terrible whine?

It was possible.

And so Jennifer ran. Back up the fenced trail, toward the fork with the broken half-sign, after the small boy. She reached the fork and rushed into the direction on the left, letting the dirt beaten path and the occasional segment of picket fence guide her. Every once in a while, she thought she could see the back of the boy's shirt as he rounded a corner and disappeared. But these were visions were fleeting and were just as likely to be her overactive imagination at work than the actual little boy.

He was certainly faster than her, that was for sure.

She came upon one final turn and the path opened up before her. The dirt road doubled in size and further ahead, a giant mansion came into view. A great building surrounded by a cobblestone wall. Then she saw the little boy—he was making a beeline for the front gate. He ran past a metal fence gate, turned around for the tinniest moment to slam the gates behind him and lock them, and then turned and sped off, out of sight within the property.

Jennifer followed, hitting the gate with all the force she could muster and yet it didn't give. It was locked shut with a padlock; completely impassable to her.

The unlucky girl turned her attention to the other side of the gate and was surprised by what she saw.

There were two kids on the other side, standing in front of the mansion. They had paper bags on their heads but, judging from their dresses, they seemed like girls. Between them lay a brown sack, dark with some terrible liquid. The girl on the left watched as the taller girl on the right beat the sack with a stick, angry grunts of effort escaping her as she worked. Behind them, three steps above into the mansion's wide entrance door, the little boy from the bus watched Jennifer. He slipped into the house the moment he saw that Jennifer knew he was there, the door closing shut behind him.

But she couldn't care about him now.

The sack—the sack the girls were beating so eagerly. There was something familiar about that too. She couldn't stand to see them beat it so remorselessly. Each whack the sack took, Jennifer felt struck her instead. Each blow felt like a sucker punch to her stomach and left her breathless.

Jennifer reached her hand into the gate, desperately screaming at the girls, trying to draw their attention, and yet they ignored her and continued on their grim task.

Horrified and feeling utterly powerless, the unlucky girl backed away from the gate.

**3**

_ ~Children with bags over their heads are beating something with a stick... The unlucky girl was frightened and back away from the fence...~_

As usual, the narrative voice calmed her.

Jennifer turned her attention away from the scene beyond the gate, and instead focused her attention on finding a way past the mansion gate. It was too smooth and too tall to climb, so she turned left and walked alongside the cobblestone wall, down its length; now intent on using the mansion wall's back door. Again, she couldn't even remember how it looked and yet somehow she knew it was there.

She turned a corner and began the walk that would lead her down the entire length of the mansion; the fence road.

Someone giggled when she walked past. She froze and listened to the tone. It was higher and louder than the little bus boy's snicker she had heard earlier, inside the shack; a different child. She turned to the cobblestone fence and, for a second, she thought she saw a head peering at her before it descended quickly, hiding out of sight. She continued her trek and saw two more heads before they moved to hide from her view. These were accompanied by lighter, more feminine laughter. Girls.

She rounded the last corner and found her path ended before the mansion's back door. A thick wooden thing which smelled exceedingly musty; the same smell trees get from years of standing in the rain.

It was locked.

Beside the door, above where the back door mail slot was, there was a sign: "NO ONE ALLOWED WITHOUT A PASS."

Oh yes. Jennifer remembered then. It was this game. This stupid game of pretend that the others always played. Both foreign and familiar. Once again, Jennifer couldn't remember where she had last played this game, but she knew what she must do.

The unlucky girl reached into her pocket and removed the slip of paper she had found alongside the dog tag back at the rickety shed. She straightened it out against the cold wall and then inserted the slip into the mail slot, sideways.

Immediately, the door lock clicked and swung open. Behind the wall, Jennifer could hear a boy laughing as he ran off. His breathing was heavy and labored.

Jennifer stepped past the wooden door's archway and into the mansion property. The mansion's back wall stood directly opposite her. She looked to her left, and although all she could see was a wooden fence and door that obstructed her view, Jennifer knew what she would find beyond there. A pile of trash next to an incinerator. The laundry hung to dry. The mansion's back door. And...

_What was it? A... warning?_

That's right._ The "Legend of Stray Dog". _She... _she had written it there for the rest of the children... just one of her warnings. Her first warning... _

_That day she told us that "Stray Dog kidnaps kidz."_

But who was it?

Jennifer's brow furrowed. She just couldn't. She couldn't remember. It was like trying to remember a dream. A few minutes ago, she wouldn't have even known that much, but seeing the back of the mansion in person dredged out the memories from the murky depths of her mind. And even so, most of it still seemed to be unreachable for her.

She couldn't remember who had warned them. But she knew somebody had. Somebody had drawn a picture on the wall of a great big dog biting a girl. Below that chalk design, they had written out their warning. It was important. That day was very important because she...

She...

_ She what?_

For a moment, she stepped in the direction of the wooden fence, where beyond she knew she would find the chalk warning drawn on the wall. Maybe if she saw it in person, she would remember. Maybe she would remember who had warned them. Maybe she would remember why that day had been so important...

Maybe she would remember why she felt so sick.

_No._

Instead, the unlucky girl turned right. Towards the space that ran along the right side of the house. The space between the old mansion and the cobblestone wall. Here she proceeded forward, toward the front of the mansion. Jennifer passed one of the old building's side doors and next to it, she saw another chalk warning drawn on the wall.

Another "Legend of Stray Dog." There was a picture of a dog with a wide mouth and it seemed to be spitting out candy. "Stray Dog gives us sweets."

Jennifer studied the drawn dog for a while. It was an evil thing, with sharp teeth and small little eyes.

_It had been meant to scare everyone, but maybe it had another message just for me?_

That thought came and went and before Jennifer even had a chance to chase its tail for a source, she forgot having ever even thought it. It was a disquieting feeling, knowing something one second and not knowing it the next. Something everyone experienced and very few ever felt. Jennifer had experienced it, but didn't know it, and so she shivered, mistaking her mental discomfort a physical one instead.

And so Jennifer walked on.

The path along the house opened up into a wider area and here, underneath a metal sheet supported by wooden planks, cages were stacked up. There was a wooden fence here which separated the side path and front yard.

Jennifer opened the door and walked past, into the mansion's front yard. Here, she was met with a familiar barren tree. Past that, she found that the children who had been savagely beating the sack were gone. Slowly now, she approached the mansion's front door entrance and saw the sack – saw it and lost it again as it was pulled into the building, the heavy double doors closing wearily behind it.

Almost hesitantly, the unlucky girl approached the mansion's front door. There was no artificial light source, but with nothing to hinder the moonlight in this open space, she was able to see clearly, and her eyes were drawn to a spot on the stone floor where the girls had been hitting the sack.

It was smeared bloody red.

Jennifer felt queasy.

She gave this spot a wide berth and instead walked toward the mansion's front door.

The building looked old and worn, like some unsightly old man. Just like in the rickety shed, green plants had long since latched unto the walls and now grew against the building in abundance. The air was chilly and, still, the only thing Jennifer could hear, aside from the sound of her footsteps and strained breathing, were the chirping of crickets in the forest.

There was some terrible tension hanging in the air. Jennifer gulped and her nerves made it so that the dry _thunk _in her throat sounded like an explosion against her temples. She was sweating. One wipe of her forehead against her forearm's sleeve told her that.

She climbed the three steps to the mansion. There was a message on the door, on a piece of paper: "ENTRANCE THIS WAY."

The unlucky girl grabbed one of the big, steel door handles and pulled it open.

Inside, Jennifer found herself in a small hall. There was a three side high line of lockers to her left. Towards the right, there was a large portrait of a severe-looking bald man on the wall along with a fern plant and a stand for umbrella—

Behind Jennifer, the front doors slammed shut.

She jumped at the noise, but immediately tried pushing on the door, trying to pry it open. Her efforts were futile. From the other side came a child's naughty laughter—a boy's—and then the hard _clink_ of a locking mechanism fulfilling its duty.

Jennifer was trapped inside.

**4**

Resigned, Jennifer proceeded from the small foyer, to the greater central hall of the building.

It was a large room, with many doors decorating the walls in every direction and the large staircase serving as the main focal point–

There was a spry movement against darkness; the small boy from the bus sprang up the stairs. Jennifer moved to follow him but was stopped when she heard laughing. It was many children and they seemed to be all around her. She looked around the room, but she was certain she was quite alone...

_~The unlucky girl felt the chilling gaze of many eyes upon her... Yet, she was all alone.~_

Yes. She had been here before alright. The very first time. The very first day, they had pushed her inside and laughed at her from out of sight... always from behind closed doors, and broken homes...

She moved to the staircase. There was a clock without hands hanging on the wall at the base of the stairs. It seemed oddly appropriate, for although Jennifer would never admit it to herself, her feelings of déjà vu had taken on a distinctly timeless quality. Before, she had been certain that she had been here before... but now, she was unsure if she was actually remembering the past, or the _future _itself.

Five steps up and the sixth was a small landing with a large royal crescent window face. The moon's gentle silvery-blue lighting filtered in through here and basked in the cruel darkness from the room, the light took on a noble and cold distinction. Something regal and dignified; the moon became a beautiful queen sitting atop her high throne. Something far away.

Something which was the complete opposite of her.

The unlucky girl continued up the stair case.

Nine steps and the tenth was another small landing. There was an old ladder leaning against the wall here. Absently, Jennifer rubbed her right shoulder. For some reason, looking at the ladder hurt in a dull, dreamy kind of way. But, once again, the small boy from the bus drew her attention away. She saw him flee through a door on the wall opposite the next few step's landing.

The unlucky girl followed.

She pulled open the door and found herself in a small hallway. Here, a single wide window provided ample pale blue light and she saw two doors—one to the left and one to the right. Next to the door on the left, foul-smelling laundry baskets were placed on metal shelves. They were pungent things that reeked of chlorine and bleach. The door on the right had a wooden tag sign that revealed it was a lavatory.

She pulled open the door on the left. Actually, she didn't know which one the boy had entered, but something drew her to the left. A single disjointed thought: _this was mine_.

Inside, she found what looked like a bedroom. An open window in the corner drew a crisp wind that ruffled the curtains slightly. There were empty shelves against a wall and the terribly thin bed sheets was blackened near their center; dirtied from when the others had...

_From when the others had filled my bed with leaves as a mean prank, but that was okay because I had turned around and used the leaves to sneak out of bed at night. I had just tucked the sheets over the leaves and none of the adults had known the difference when they checked the dormitory at night–_

And then the thought was gone.

And where had it come from? For a moment, Jennifer could have sworn she was listening to someone else in the room speak aloud. But she was alone and the dirty sheets in the bed in the corner were just that. The thought had been a passing visitor in her mind.

But maybe it wasn't a visitor.

Jennifer got a strange thought then.

Maybe she was the visitor in her mind.

There was something attached to the wooden column at the center of the room. A creepy rag doll dressed in a tattered dress was tied to the pillar. A mock dress which looked an awful lot like the dress Jennifer was wearing then. Jennifer ran her hands down her side. The fabric of her clothes were warm with her body heat and very familiar to her touch—

The rag doll's head collapsed, crumbling to look at the floor.

The unlucky girl stepped past the doll. Behind the pillar, Jennifer saw a suitcase. She was willing to bet it was the same suitcase she had forgotten back on the bus. It didn't make a lick of sense, but Jennifer knew it must be. There was something else near the back of the room—an old photo was lying atop a small drawer, next to a vase of drooping roses.

Jennifer picked up the photo.

It was another old thing. A faded print taken in black and white turning tan with age. The picture depicted a group of children—three boys and nine girls—and two adults standing in front of the mansion. It emanated a certain kind of general happiness. Most of the children had their hands linked together and one of the adults—an elderly man in the right corner of the shot—had his hands fondly on two children.

Then there was a boy's snicker.

The sound came from outside the room, in the hallway.

Jennifer put the old photo down. For some reason, it made her happy to look at the picture. A warm feeling bubbled in her chest and eased her worries. But now was not the time for that. No. Now...

Now she needed to find the boy from the bus.

Now she needed answers.

The unlucky girl heard his footsteps in the hallway, beyond the bedroom door. So she followed the quick _pitter patter _of his steps. She found the small hallway between the bedroom and the lavatory was empty, but she proceeded out into the second floor of the building's entrance hall, and saw the boy again.

He fled at her intrusion. Down the passage opposite her, and into a waiting door.

And the unlucky girl followed, opening the door slowly, unsure of what to expect.

Here she found another hallway, but this one was longer than the tiny one she had wandered into before. She proceeded along its length, and here two windows allowed for blue luminescence so she was not blind. On the other side of the windows, Jennifer could see the middle of the mansion and it seemed that it allowed for a small inner courtyard. But it was nothing fancy. Just a cramped space of dirt and a few patches of long grass. Simple, and maybe with a taste of poverty. That was what Jennifer thought then. Poverty. But really, it was a vibe the whole mansion gave her. Maybe at one point this building had been luxurious and grand, but now... Now, even without the air of disrepair it held, it occupied a sense of poverty.

A mansion for the poor.

Beside the first window the unlucky girl came to, there was a small flower pot. Here there were yellow floral decorations, wild flowers with four petals. Not roses, no. These were Wood Poppy. And although Jennifer wouldn't have known this, Wood Poppy were an exceedingly rare flower in England of the early 20th century. Long believed to be extinct, the idea that some poor orphan girl from this orphanage had found the wildflowers out in the forest and picked them for the empty vases in this hallway would probably send a horticulturist into hysterics.

There was something drawn onto the wooden floor at Jennifer's feet. Messily doodled with thick black crayon strokes, stick figure train tracks led from the door she had entered from, to another door on the left. Jennifer might have followed them, but the small boy from the bus was standing at the end of the hallway.

He was waiting for her.

**5**

He may have been waiting for her, but he wasn't keen on sticking around. She approached him and he fled, running down the corner and out of sight.

Jennifer rounded the same corner and she saw him run down this passage and disappear around another turn.

There was something strange here.

Jennifer continued down the hall.

Just like on the other side, two long windows gave way to pale moonlight, and here too, Jennifer could see messy crayon drawings on the floor. But not imitation stick train tracks, no. Here, underneath each of the two windows, long squares were drawn. Rectangles really. Rectangles with intersecting lines drawn near the farthest side. They crossed in a **T** and it took Jennifer a moment to register what she was looking at. Windows. Someone had drawn windows beneath each of the actual windows. Silvery light touched the drawings and Jennifer could see that there was something more to these drawings.

A skull.

Or at least that's what it looked like. Inside the first window drawing, there was a skull drawn with a wide open mouth and teeth. Beside it, there was a message scrawled on the floor with an arrow indicating the skull drawing: "skeltan." Skeleton.

There was a similar drawing on the second rectangle on the floor, but this one was even more poorly done and lacked the explanatory message.

Jennifer didn't know what to make of this.

Maybe the children of the mansion believed that a skeleton appeared here at night? A ghastly face grinning at them from outside the glass?

Jennifer looked up at the window and very nearly screamed. But she realized quickly that the pale silvery blue face looking back at her from beyond the glass was only her own reflection.

_How stupid. How could I fall for that again?_

...Again?

Another errant thought. Jennifer couldn't remember having ever been to this mansion and yet her sense of déjà vu wouldn't leave...

Actually, it was growing stronger. With each step she took, her conviction that had been so strong outside on the bus stop began to waver.

But she couldn't turn back. She really wanted to, oh yes. But she couldn't. Not anymore. And maybe not back at the bus stop either. Maybe she had never had a chance to escape this nightmare. Again, that image returned to her mind: chasing after the bus and losing her way in the darkness, only to end up back where she had begun. Why had she thought that then? Why was she thinking that now?

Maybe... maybe she was walking in circles now? Not actual circles, but... another kind of circle...

Maybe, maybe.

Even so, she couldn't stop those steps that were drawing her closer to the boy from the bus... The steps that were drawing her closer to her past...

To the déjà vu that wasn't déjà vu.

Jennifer proceeded down the hall and turned the final corner.

There was a door here. But before she could even open it, she could hear the laughter. The laughter of children. Many of them, boy and girl. A happy noise that should evoke pure pleasure and innocent glee, but in the darkness of that hallway instead evoked astonishing cruelty and ignorant malice.

Jennifer opened the door. Maybe she was expecting to find the laughing children. She should have known better. It was empty.

She entered a room with a dark stairway. The passage continued on before her, but she ignored that hallway space. The boy from the bus was to her left, on the steps. He was fleeing upstairs, taking the steps two at a time.

And so the unlucky girl moved in that direction. The wooden steps creaked under her weight and the safety railing was powdery with dust; she looked down, and although Jennifer couldn't see the first floor, she fancied that she could see shadows shaking excitedly on those steps. Ghosts of shadows really. Everything in this damn mansion was a ghost. Or a ghost of a ghost. Or a ghost of a ghost of a ghost.

Just like the skeleton in the window. Just like her reflection in the glass.

Maybe she was a ghost too.

She reached the first landing and she saw the boy again. He was at the next landing, running off and out of sight. The hollow creak of a door opening. The same boy's laughter bounced and carried in the empty corners of the room. He was in reach. But that reach was quickly becoming unreachable.

Jennifer climbed the final steps.

**6**

The unlucky girl stepped into the attic.

The (admittedly aged) decor of the mansion dropped away here. No fancy paneling or artistic paint to impress anyone – here the wooden boards of the walls were visible to the naked eye. There were no fancy chandeliers or lamps – just a hanging light bulb with an exposed switch on the wall. And it was off, of course. She had left the possibility of windows or moonlight behind on the second floor. Here, gloom and shadows reigned supreme Jennifer had to pause for a while and let her eyes grow accustomed to the darkness, so that stark blackness could drain away to obscure gray.

There were two doors. One to the left and one to the right. But the unlucky girl didn't have to worry about taking the wrong door. The door on the left was ajar.

Jennifer stepped inside.

And to her surprise: light. Actual lighting, for the first time since the lamp at the bus stop. There was a lamp in the room, it was sitting on a table to the left. It looked like she had entered a storage area—an attic storage. There were chairs and desks and drawers and boxes stacked and stored away here.

Jennifer approached the table and there she saw horrifying things.

Metal tools with sharp edges and pointy ends. Metal tools that looked like they contracted and snapped and nicked and shaved and sliced and cut and _peeled_. Scalpels, dental forceps, scissors, and she couldn't even name the rest. And next to these were a pair of long surgical gloves. And there was something else. Just one more thing. Blood. There was red plasma smeared on the tools and on the gloves and on the table and Jennifer felt like she wanted to gasp, but before that she had to start breathing again—

The unlucky girl saw something in her peripheral vision. She turned and saw the boy from the bus turn and run down a passage that cut away, further into the storage room. He had been standing there all alone, but the light from the table and the... the things she saw there must have distracted her.

Jennifer followed the boy into the passage.

It was a narrow space where wooden support columns were visible.

She came upon a strange door. A strange protrusion; it looked like a broken wooden box was attached to the door. But strangely, the unlucky girl's eyes were not drawn to this. No, instead they looked at the door—something was drawn in fine red directly unto the wood.

Curves and lines stylized into the form of a rose.

Jennifer opened the door.

The room on the other side was wide and large. Larger than any individual room she had entered yet, except for the entrance hall. There were candles here to light the room, set in pairs against each other, one across from the other, leading to the end of the room. At the end of the candle trail, tables and desks were stacked atop another and they were mantled in long white cloth sheets and drapes. Candles were placed sporadically around the setting and red roses were placed as decorations, cut into the sheets and laying on the clothed tabletop. A red lined carpet adorned the center, giving the setup the look of a mock-throne and to finish the effect two chairs stood at the very top and center.

The boy from the bus was sitting at the very top, on the chair to the left. He seemed to be studying Jennifer behind inscrutable eyes. His legs kicking back and forth, as if he were rather bored.

As Jennifer approached the throne, her shadow stretched and grew behind her.

"My, aren't you a slow poke, like always." He laughed. He was too far up above her. The darkness of the ceiling above him and the lighting from the candles below him clashed badly in contrast, and the shadows that danced on his face made it hard to make out his facial features. "Here, read me the rest of the story. You know, the book I handed you."

The story book. The blank one from the bus.

She searched her pocket and was honestly surprised when she found it. The events on the bus had happened so quickly, she was surprised she hadn't dropped it on the road or misplaced it in her confusion. But miraculously, it seemed she had had the good sense to fold it up and stow it away.

She pulled it out and, upon flipping through a few more pages, was surprised again: it was no longer blank.

But she didn't have time to marvel at this. The boy sitting above her was looking down expectantly. The moment was sparkling with trepidation. Her lips were dry, so she licked them and it was only then that she knew she had no saliva.

At that moment, it felt as if the entire universe was waiting for her.

Jennifer began to read aloud.

**7**

" 'The Little Princess.'

"Once upon a time, there was a precious little girl.

"Her friend, the Princess of the Red Rose, was always at her side.

"Then one day, her mummy and daddy died suddenly. The Princess, too, disappeared, leaving the girl all alone.

"And the poor little girl was sent away to a strange house. At her new home, the Aristocrat Club lived by the Rule of Rose. But the girl found herself very much alone..."

**8**

Jennifer flicked through the rest of the pages but they remained blank—

A gentle ringing tone sounded then, projected by the mansion's audio announcement system. This was followed by a gentle girl's voice: "We will now begin the funeral. All those attending, please gather around at this time." The ringing tone sounded again, ending the announcement.

"Come on, Jennifer. The funeral is about to begin," the boy said, atop his fake little throne. He failed to even try to disguise his wild glee. "It's a funeral for your dear friend."

But Jennifer could barely hear him. She was too busy having a mental breakdown.

The world was no longer sparkling with trepidation. The entire universe was no longer waiting for her. At that moment, it seemed as if reality had flipped. The entire universe was now determined to take everything she thought she knew and turn it upside down. Her will no longer mattered. She wasn't waiting in line anymore—now she was strapped into the roller coaster, and all she could do was hang on for her life.

_No._

Denial, of course, comes first. Always.

_ No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. NO. NO! _This couldn't be happening. No, not now. Not again. Not ever. Memories splurged together with pain and the tears that streamed from Jennifer's eyes then were blind. Something was bubbling in her head. She was distraught but she couldn't understand why this was so. She was bawling, and something at the very center of her being felt as if it had cracked and broken, but she didn't understand having ever even felt this center, much less why it should feel broken. She couldn't breathe. She couldn't think. This wasn't just a bad case of déjà vu. This was déjà vu coming up behind her, kicking her in the ass and then putting her into a chokehold.

She was having a panic attack.

Part of her knew that. Part of her knew that she should take a few deep and heavy breaths or she might just hyperventilate and pass out. Part of her knew this was bad, very bad. Another part couldn't be bothered to give a damn.

Part of her also registered that the boy had left his little play throne and that he had skirted around her, escaping away from her, out through the same door she had entered.

_~Before she realized it, the boy was gone... and the girl was left in confusion.~_

Yes. That helped tremendously. By placing the events happening to her outside of herself, by making herself into a third person watching the events, she could handle this. She could survive this again. She could–

The barking began then. A single pitiful wail followed by a dog's cry for attention.

And Jennifer took off. Away from the mock-throne, she sprinted at the door to the attic room and nearly pulled it off its hinges.

The barking was so familiar, so intimately recognizable—

It freaking hurt. That's what it was. The barking lit the fire in her that the storybook and mention of a funeral had put out. Helped her move her feet. No, _forced_ her to move her feet. The barking was a magnet – no, that's not powerful enough. The barking was a planet that had caught her in its gravity field and now refused to let go.

She ran out through the attic storage area and when she nearly tripped over a chair in her path, she wiped her tears with her sleeve and carried on, ignoring the suspiciously soft pain in her shin which meant she had probably drawn blood. Blood in the attic storage. That did something. A fleeting memory that wasn't a memory. She looked at the table, at the tools that weren't tools. The the dog's barking was more compelling, and its sound urged her on. Past the door that led to the stairwell, and right down the two flights of stairs to the second floor.

And all the while, the barking squeezed her heart in all the wrong places.

The barking was coming from outside. She had followed the sound's origins so far but on the second floor landing, she was suddenly divided. The window. She could hear the barking echoing from the window. The dog must be out in the mansion's inner courtyard, so she should descend the stairs and find a door out... but...

_But I'm scared of what I know I'm going to see—_

But she might see the dog from the window.

And at that moment, the unlucky girl found she was unwilling to waste ten seconds running down the stairs if it meant she could see the dog now.

Jennifer approached the window.

The barking ceased.

There was someone down below, in the courtyard. Four someones. They were standing in a squared formation, looking down at something... but the window made it impossible to see clearly...

Jennifer opened the window's locks and pulled the glass pane open. She stuck her head out into the chilly night and yelled down at the people in the courtyard. But they ignored her exclamations. She motioned and waved but even so the four people continued to...

Wait... what were they doing?

Jennifer peered closer, angling herself dangerously out into the air.

The four people down below were short. Children. They were wearing paper bags on their heads, just like the children at the front of the mansion had, and it looked like they were looking down at a mound of dirt at their feet. They were whispering something, but Jennifer couldn't quite make it out...

The unlucky girl leaned out further. She could just barely make out something carried in the wind...

"...Ashes to ashes... Dust to dust... Ashes to ashes... Dust to dust..."

That... that was a funeral prayer!

She nearly lost her balance then. She lunged backwards and rushed back to the stairwell, very nearly leaping the steps down. The ground floor held a door on the wall opposite the stairs. She rushed to it and practically toppled out into the inner courtyard.

**9**

The children were gone.

Jennifer moved toward the dirt mound. There was a stick stuck into the center of the pile. There was a shovel planted into the ground in front of the heap of soil. It could have been an innocent earth mound, maybe even a newly planted plant, but Jennifer kept thinking that it looked an awful lot like a grave...

_~When the girl went out to the yard, she found a shovel standing before a grave.~_

Something had changed.

Jennifer grabbed the shovel and began to work. She scooped the dirt away in long arcs that wrung her hands from the effort. It wasn't hard going, but she still heaved with the strain. The ground was soft and freshly dug, but after a few strokes, her shoulders ached in throbbing pain all the same.

Gravity had changed. Something wasn't actively attracting her here anymore, now it had become a repelling force. A force which her body automatically moved to counteract.

_~The unlucky girl sensed that something very dear to her was buried here.~_

Jennifer wasn't actively narrating anymore. It felt as if she was on autopilot, and her hands moved without her heed. Up and down, left and right. She dug down and moved the dirt aside. Before long, she was covered in brown stains from her effort.

_~As if possessed, she began to dig furiously...~_

As she worked on the "grave", so entirely compelled on finding what lay beneath the small hill of dirt, Jennifer missed what was happening behind her. Four children filed into the courtyard and took turns filling containers they carried from the water of a barrel. Their faces were masked by paper but behind that, their eyes studied the unlucky girl with a petty emotion that would have been vivid disdain on a grown adult.

It wasn't long before Jennifer's struggles had born fruit. Having removed most of the fresh soil, the unlucky girl had uncovered a long wooden crate buried in the ground. A wooden rectangular box—

_A coffin—_

The unlucky girl tossed the shovel aside and it hit the ground with a soft _thud_. She was on her knees then, using her hands to clear the remaining dirt away. Sweat clung to her brow like morning dew on a leaf, like the run off of a cold toilet at night, and her nails were black with dirt. But when she was finally done, it was almost like she couldn't bear to continue to the next step. She sat there for a few moments, looking at the crate and allowed herself a few deep breaths, listening to the crickets in the background, feeling the cool and cruel wind against her warm and sweaty skin, before she continued.

Reaching down, Jennifer popped the box open, bottom first. It was surprisingly heavy and she heaved a bit with the effort, but that wasn't really why she hesitated in opening the casket. She just had come this far and know her body no longer moved automatically. She was no longer on autopilot. She wanted to see what was in the coffin, and she was terribly afraid of what she would see there.

Squinting, she looked into the darkness of the crate. There was something there. A shape.

Jennifer opened the lid further, and she let out a small involuntary gasp.

The sack. The bloody bag from the front of the mansion. The one the girls had been beating with a stick in front of the mansion. It was lying in the coffin.

The unlucky girl lifted the top off completely, throwing it to the side. The tears were coming again; a fresh wave of despair washed over her when she saw the sack again and behind her, the four children had finished filling their containers with water.

They approached her.

Girls. They were girls in dresses. They wore paper bags over their heads but Jennifer could see their eyes through little holes they had cut into the paper. They were all looking down at her, from very far away.

The tallest girl, a girl with a fish drawn into her paper bag mask, stood over her with a water pitcher. "Just look at you! You're filthy!"

That was right. She was covered in dirt and salty sweat, she was crying into the night.

The tall girl tittered naughtily and began to pour the pitcher on to Jennifer. The other three girls moved at her cue, and emptied their containers over Jennifer as well. The water was cool. Physically, she was fine. A little chilly maybe, but the water was good in that sense. It washed away the dirt. It washed away the tears running down her cheeks. The water was cleansing, like a bath.

But it was also very bad. To let them do this to her without a fight was to give the girls power over her very life. Cleanliness was theirs to give; the goodness of the water became corrupted with spite and heartlessness. Accepting that, the water was not just cool. It was cold.

An arctic freezing touch. Running down her head, down her shoulders, chilling her to the bone.

There was something warm spreading on the ground beneath her legs. Jennifer wasn't sure, but she thought she might have peed then. Just a little, in the middle of that cold, impromptu bath. And that filthy action in the darkness of the night brought back a fresh wave of memories.

_Yes. I used to pee in bed. That's why everyone called me filthy and the others put the leaves on my bed. It was a joke. A joke because I would have so many nightmares and wake up screaming with a wet bed and one day they heard when Martha fumed at me and said it would be better if I just slept on leaves. So every night they filled my bed with leaves as a joke. That's why my sheets were always dirty. That's why I escaped from the dormitory and into a free room by myself at the first chance possible... _

The mansion's audio announcement system crackled then and a tone sounded. But this was not a gentle ringing tone. This was the sound of a small gong being struck five times. A noise foreign to the mansion. A noise from...

From...

From what?

"Ladies and Gentlemen," called out a voice then. But again, this was not a voice belonging to the mansion. This was a grown woman's voice, a grown woman from... "Thank you for joining us on our flight. Attention all passengers. We will be taking off in a short while. Please take all large luggage to Section 8 of the Freight Storage Compartment. Thank you."

The same audio crackle followed her message.

Jennifer looked up at the sky, as if trying to catch the message as it echoed and reverberated around the mansion's walls, and so she didn't see who pushed her. But someone did and she fell backwards, into the crate she had dug up, her head hitting the sack.

Above her, the girls lifted the box's lid and closed it over her. Jennifer tried to shove it off but its surprising weight had come back to her detriment and the weight of the four girls was pressed upon her, closing her in.

She could just make out a chanting all around her as she screamed. "Dust to Dust..."

"No!"

"Ashes to ashes..."

"No!"

"Dust to dust..."

"Please!"

"Ashes to ashes..."

The crate was moving now. The girls had lifted it; it bobbed up and down and Jennifer's head kept hitting the bloody sack with a soft _squish _as it did. They were moving, carrying the wooden coffin as they walked. Chanting their funeral prayer, their steps a noisy back and forth against gravel and dirt.

Jennifer peered between the wooden boards of her prison as it swayed to and fro. She couldn't see much. But what she saw frightened her. Treetops, waving gracefully in the wind. A sight which should have been impossible since they had been in the inner courtyard and hadn't walked through the mansion. But it seemed possibility and improbability had been frozen on this most terrible night. Tonight, cruelty ruled atop reason and logic's red throne.

The beautiful moon was still sitting high in the far sky. But it wasn't full anymore; it had shrunken slightly, entering its waning phase. It peered down at her like an eye, vindictively between the clouds, and then disappeared out of her sight behind the trees.

Jennifer was glad to see it go.


	2. April 1930: The Unlucky Clover Field

**April 1930  
The Unlucky Clover Field**

**1**

When Jennifer knew consciousness next, she was alone.

She blinked awake and the dim lighting was refreshing, a cool wind against her tired retinas. Somewhere far above her, there was a slow twisting metal sound; something hollow and dreary and large. Like a slow spinning turbine; like a dying wolf howling into a moonless sky. The unlucky girl tried to stand but she found she was bound. Ropes were tied around her body, holding her in place next to something cold. She tried to stand but the bindings wouldn't give, not even half an inch.

She was in a room. That's what she knew next. A room who's only source of dim lighting was a portable lantern lying to her right, a few feet away on the floor. And the casket. The wooden box she had unearthed and the girls had dumped her into. It was there too, next to the lantern. The heavy lid leaning against the crate's farther side. The room's floors were piled leather and the walls were the same, stitched together in a way that bulged outward like a full stomach.

_~When the girl awoke, she found herself in a strange room.~_

For the next few minutes, Jennifer struggled against the rope. She leaned to the left, to the right, she even tried once to bend low and touch her chin to the floor mat. None of which helped – her futile escape efforts were soundtracked by the groaning metal that howled somewhere far above her.

_~It was a cold, lonely, stinky room.~_

And boy wasn't that the truth. Everything in this room emanated a heavy, pungent smell. It was an offensive musk that attacked the nose and eyes mercilessly. In the brown light, Jennifer actually thought she could see it. How the odors danced around her, and shuffled around the room. Trapped by the filthy leather that made up the floors and walls, the stench grabbed everything it could and made it its own.

Finally, there was something new. A rolling, buzzing sound. The light feedback of an audio system. Jennifer ceased her struggles and peered into the darkness of the farthest corners of the room, trying to find the source of this noise. But, as with her efforts to free herself, this was futile. It seemed the sounds were coming from somewhere behind her.

Then there was a gentle ringing sound. Like the sound that had accompanied the funeral announcement when she was in the mansion's attic. The sound that signaled the start of a broadcast. Jennifer froze, straining her ears for whatever would follow. In the quiet, she could make out someone's light breathing being amplified. It was the tense sound of excitement.

"Good morning, Jennifer." The voice she heard then was the boy's voice. The small child from the bus. It was a little distorted from the audio system, but it was him alright. Light and haughty, and most of all, very annoying. "How do you feel? Let's have a little chat, shall we?"

Jennifer agreed. Anything to get out of the bindings.

"Hmm. Good girl." Mocking words. The words of a king addressing the servant. No. The words of a master addressing their pet. A very small and weak pet. Like a rabbit. Or a rat. Or maybe a worm. "Jennifer, you know you've been a bad, bad girl. And bad girls need to be punished, don't they?"

Sure, why not. Again, Jennifer mindlessly agreed.

"Hmm. You're a brave girl." That last word was accented oddly. As if the speaker was hinting at some inside joke. As if the speaker didn't really believe a word of what they had just said. Well, to be fair, Jennifer didn't really believe she was very brave then either. "Anyway, I'll be the one giving the orders around here, okay?"

Yes. Yes that was fine. The unlucky girl's arms ached in a silent throb where the rope dug into her. Her shoulder sockets burned with pain and her legs had fallen asleep beneath her and even that numbness hurt. She whimpered her agreement.

"Hmm. Clever girl." Again, the tone of someone praising their pet. But now with a rougher undercurrent. Almost cruel, but not quite. Jennifer hated it. She didn't like being treated like an animal. "Now, I'm going to give you your first order. Every month, you need to find a gift and bring it to the Aristocrat Club. If you don't, I'll kill you." The abrupt threat hung in the air for a moment. Something unreal. Something fantastical. But for some reason, Jennifer got the impression that the boy was not kidding. "Is there anything about this that you don't understand?"

Jennifer said no. The unlucky girl was near tears. She would have answered in the affirmative to anything the boy wanted. And the boy seemed to sense this, because his response was shaking with restrained anger.

"No? Hmm. Oh, well it doesn't really matter what you say. You see, Jennifer, there are really only two kinds of people in the world: those who take orders, and those who give them. And from now on, I'll be giving the orders. Not fair? Well, dear Jennifer, nothing's fair here." And then there was laughing. It wasn't a happy sound, it was black and white – utterly small and carefree and at the same time larger than life and cruel; an almost forced cry. It wove in and out of each of the boy's words and made him sound maniacal and egotistical and just downright mean. Jennifer did indeed cry then, and she sincerely hoped the boy wouldn't see because she somehow knew this would enrage him and fuel his passion. "You will follow my orders, or else. For I am the Prince, and the Prince rules! This is your life, but you'll play by my rules." And for the next while, all she could hear was the sound of his dark merriment in the dimness of the filthy room.

"Let the games begin, dear Jennifer!"

And when his laughter was cut off by the audio system being shut down, Jennifer knew only relief.

**2**

Something clicked and then there was the sound of machinery. Whatever it was that Jennifer was tied to began to vibrate softly—the result of some unknown action out of sight. Something was descending.

And then fear struck her. She didn't like this. She didn't like being tied and held down while some unseen thing fell upon her. She didn't like the way the cold metal that her hands touched behind her reverberated with a trembling that resembled unwinding excitement. She didn't like the feeling of being helpless and powerless in the pale light of this room while reeking stenches wrapped themselves around her and violated her flaring nostrils. This was too familiar. This was too painful. It didn't matter if the rusty, creaking sounds of the makeshift contraption made it obvious that it was not remotely human, Jennifer loathed to be alone in the dark now.

Then there was the pull of something contracting. The tinniest sound of a struggling snip between the sound of creaky machinations and then abrupt silence; the machine had been turned off. The ropes that bound her sides loosened and the unlucky girl struggled one and twice and found that they gave way and fell off her easily enough. As she worked to pull off the remains of her bindings, she heard the turning of a pulley. Jennifer managed to stand and finally she saw what she had been tied to: a metal structure pillar. Behind it, something was rising up. Jennifer stepped around to get a better view and saw a pair of rusty, old scissors hanging in the air. They were fast being pulled high and out of her reach by the same system of pulleys that had lowered it previously to free her. The apparatus was installed above the pillar, running along the fabric ceiling and disappearing out of sight behind a softly, billowing wall.

_~And so... The rope was cut: snip–snip... and the girl joined the Aristocrat Club. Congratulations! Congratulations!~_

The Aristocrat Club... How ghastly sounding.

But of course this was just like the first time... the first time...

Jennifer felt sick. The floor was rolling beneath her feet. It wasn't anything sudden or rough, but it moved in lulling rhythmic churning that probably would have seemed soothing to a dozing baby. But to Jennifer, the motions only made her queasy. It always had. It was the same kind of feeling she got when she was on a boat. A rocking boat out on the relentless sea. A disgusting feeling. A filthy feeling. A long time ago she had felt sorry for the fish, the fish of the sea. They had to live in the rolling sea, in that sickening feeling. They probably felt sick all the time, like they would vomit at any moment.

Or who knows, maybe they got used to it eventually.

A strange thought struck Jennifer then. The slow movement of the ground beneath her only fueled it. She was out at sea. But not on a boat. No, she was in a fish. She was trapped in a large fish swimming through the sea. The room around her reeked with chlorine and bleach and the odors became twisted in her imagination to become the salty and sweet smell of a rotting fish.

_A filthy fish..._

Jennifer snapped back to the present. Away from her twisting trail of thoughts and ideas and she was still in the disgusting smelling room. Alone. The dim light behind her allowing her to examine the rest of the room that had before been out of sight. And it was pretty unremarkable, but she had expected that. With one exception that is.

To her left, against a wall, there was a headless stick scarecrow crafted from tied broomsticks and rags. At its base stood an aged chalkboard, but it was smudged and unreadable. She approached it and realized she had seen it before. It was the same scarecrow from the rickety shed outside the mansion. The one where she had heard dog barks coming–

"Lass, please help me find my head. Once I am whole again, I'll return the favor." the broomstick figure said. It spoke simply enough and its voice had a rather down to earth tone. A very real sound. As if to imply, _yes I can speaking – why shouldn't I be able speak?_

It was only natural. Like the attacking and retreating tides. Like the unfaltering sound of crickets at night. Like the turning of the planet. That this scarecrow could talk was the most natural thing in the world. Yes sire, that's what Jennifer thought then.

_But it seemed possibility and improbability had been frozen on this most terrible night. Tonight, cruelty ruled atop reason and logic's red throne... _

The broomstick figure's head was sitting on a chair beside the door. It was a bucket. And when Jennifer approached to fetch it, it too spoke. "Lass, please put me back atop my body... back on top of the headless scarecrow behind you. If you do, I'll help you in return."

She fitted the bucket on the broomstick figure, its positioning mocking the form of a head. Or a helmet.

"I am the Bucket Knight, keeper of promises," the scarecrow said. "... Yet, time can be so cruel, for I have aged and cannot remember the past. You know what I refer to, and I know that you know... However, you do not know at the moment, nor can you remember."

Yes. That was right. Jennifer did know. Or rather, didn't know. Jennifer didn't know what the Bucket Knight was referring to and in that it was correct. But the unlucky girl had no idea as to what memories the knight was speaking of. And all this talking about knowing and not knowing was confusing her a little bit.

"Let us recall our memories together in order to remember our promise," the Bucket Knight said and finally settled into silence.

Jennifer waited patiently. She had expected more from this, her only friend in the dark, rocking room she found herself in. But the scarecrow remained silent. Eventually, she nudged the bucket with one shaking hand.

And in response, the Bucket Knight spoke. "...If memory serves me correctly, the order you've been given is the reason you are here. It may be unpleasant, yet you have no choice but to follow it. A

tribute to the Aristocrat Club... That's your only clue." And then the scarecrow was silent again.  
Jennifer turned to the door of the filth room. Yes. The Bucket Knight was right. She would get nowhere by just staying here. She had to leave. She had to be brave and proceed forward... She had to...

Jennifer pulled open the sliding door and stepped out into the unknown. Not for the first time, and not for the last, she desperately wished she was back in her old bed, tucked under familiar covers and embraced tightly by her mother... But the thought was fleeting and if someone had asked her what mother she had been thinking of, her expression would reveal bewilderment. She wouldn't be capable of remembering such a person.

Remembering, after all, can be very painful.

**3**

The unlucky girl found herself walking along a wooden corridor, and it seemed that this pathway must be suspended up high. One end of the hallway actually had a metal railing and when Jennifer had first looked over it, she had been met with only stark darkness. Peering into that impenetrableness, her legs had seized up and her queasy feelings had only intensified. For a terrifying moment, it felt like she might actually topple over into that blackness. But then the moment passed and she had stepped away. Stepped away and promised herself that she would not repeat that action. For her own safety.

But she had no idea where she was. For sure, this wasn't the mansion, the orphanage. The metal howling kept repeating from somewhere far away and each shaky step she took offered a small little echo response. She was suspended up high and the space must be huge... Inside somewhere metallic. Inside somewhere hollow. And the ground kept rocking ever so slowly. Like a boat. Like a fish.

But, again, she was sure she had been here before.  
When she had first left the filth room, she had found a posted message. In tattered paper taped on the nearby wall: YOU ARE INVITED TO THE ARISTOCRAT CLUB. An arrow had pointed the unlucky girl down the suspended walkway and so she had proceeded. She had passed a few doors but had not bothered to check their contents. Jennifer suspected that if she needed to enter these rooms, a marking would have told her so. And she was right. When the hallway opened upon a large room filled with stacks of items and boxes, Jennifer found another taped post pointing the way. A light source was suspended from the ceiling and a little green butterfly fluttered around it aimlessly. The room seemed to be a supply or cargo area and, aside from the ever-present metallic and hollow moan, the unlucky girl could make out the rambunctious sounds of small machinery here. A certain chugging and grinding. The source was nearby but when she came upon a post that directed her through a door to the left – and away from the sounds – she did not pursue it.

And that was probably for the best.  
Jennifer found herself in a room with a cold, metal staircase. The "Sector 8 Stairway," the unlucky girl had read outside the room. Here there was another unknown door but Jennifer instead climbed the steps. There was another guide posting at the base of the stairs directing her upward, and as she had been directed her, she would do.

She hated that aspect of herself.

The unlucky girl climbed the twenty-one steps. The door at the end of the stairs was an unremarkable sliding thing, but there was one thing of note. Next to the door was a wooden plaque. Scrawled into the wood: An aristocrat's society.

The unlucky girl stepped through.

And the room she was met with was different than anything she had seen yet. The first class guest sector. Gaudy carpeting lined the floor and the walls were a fine paneled wood. The chairs that lined the hallway walls were puffy, ornate things and the single fern stuck into the corner gave the air a thick, musky taste. Very distinguishable. Very high class. Very expensive.

Jennifer thought it was all a little bit silly.

There was a message hung directly to her right: Social Rank. Refined Class. Duchess Diana. Countess Eleanor. Baroness Meg. And spaced a little lower from that, under a line: Lower Class. Poor Amanda. Beggar–

_Beggar Jennifer._

The unlucky girl touched her name on the notice. It was been scrawled on a piece of paper and then glued to the notice. But it was done in a messy little scrawl that was different from the rest of the words on the bill. The higher class names had been written carefully, almost meticulously, in red. Red for the rose. Red for the aristocracy. Even Amanda's name (her name's only company in the lower class) above her had been written rather neatly, but with no distinct care; in a way, it said that whoever had written it didn't have any special feelings, good or bad, for her. But Jennifer's name was different. The loops of the letters had been pressed in and then smeared, as if someone had run their hands over the lettering afterwards. There was a sloppiness that was distinctly more characteristic than any of the other words. Whoever had written her name had been different than, say, the person who had written Amanda's name. Sloppiness could mean disorder. Or it could mean concealment.

For some reason, it bothered the unlucky girl.

Jennifer turned away from the note. There were two other posted bills in the room. One was a map that outlined the hierarchical positions of the Aristocrat Club. An illustrated version of the social rank post, but different in that it mentioned two positions that where higher than the Duchess, Countess, and Baroness. Two slots at the absolute top: the Red Rose Princess and the Bear Prince.

The final posted message was titled The Rule of Gifts. It expanded upon what the boy had told Jennifer when she was tied down in the filth room. Find a gift of the month. All members must participate. Tardiness, cheating, and stealing are prohibited. Junk, toys, and more! No refunds. Only exchange. Red Crayon Aristocrat

Three different hallways led three different ways, left, right, and directly ahead. But Jennifer needn't have worried about which way to go. The path in the dead center ended at a familiar door. A door with a strange box hanging from its face. Like the door from the mansion. The door from the attic.

_~The girl has found a strange door, but where does it lead?~_

The unlucky girl walked down the length of the hall. Honestly, it sort of resembled a mail box. The box that is. Jennifer yanked the knob but the door resisted her futile attempts at trespass. There was a little note taped to the door, above the box with the words: THIS MONTH'S GIFT. Drawn in red, there was a butterfly. Next to that, underlined: ONE PER PERSON.

And when the girl simply stood helplessly before the door, unsure of how to proceed, the door spoke. "Give me a beautiful butterfly, one per person. Is that clear?"

Jennifer tried to say no. That she didn't want to play this stupid game. That she didn't want to find a butterfly. That she didn't even know where she was. But the door cut her off before she could even start.

"No gift, no entry. Is that clear?" The box door said, unsympathetically. "... Give me a butterfly... Give me a butterfly. Find one and you shall be invited to join the Aristocrat Club..."

Jennifer turned away from the door. It was all she could do then. She would not be getting around it. Not like this. And it wouldn't do her any good to argue. To cry. To resist...

Two girls ran past, right to left, directly ahead of her, at the end of the hallway.

The unlucky girl followed. There were doors here, two on either side. But she ignored them, intent on reaching the end of the hall. Intent on finding someone, anyone, to explain to her where she was and what was going on.

But when she reached the end of the hall, those thoughts were wiped away.

There was a line of diagonal windows here, and looking through that glass, the unlucky girl could see an ocean clouds framing a dark sky. She had thought the steady rise and fall of the ground had resembled the ocean, but looking at the dark skyline skimming by, she realized how wrong she had been. No, not the sea. The sky.

An airship. A rigid airship.

A fish swimming through the sky.

And then Jennifer screamed.

**4**

_~Looking through the window, the unlucky girl saw that she was above the clouds. The airship slowly swam through the sky, carrying the helpless girl inside...~_

Jennifer stepped away from the line of windows. It wasn't good for her stomach to look at that scene for too long. More than queasy, it made her head feel light. There wasn't much more at this end of the hallway. Just a little dead end space. So the unlucky girl turned back, back toward the little lobby. Library to her right. Sickroom to her left. That's what the room tag's said.

_The sickroom..._

Jennifer stopped.

_She was always sick..._

Jennifer's hand's grabbed the door knob.

_Is she...?_

The unlucky girl pulled open the door and stepped inside. The sickroom wasn't what one might expect for an airship. Just a small little room, a single small bed, a few chairs and stools, a little lamp sitting on a tiny little cabinet table, and two crayon drawings attached to the wall's flower and line wallpaper. The floor was lined with wood and there was a faint smell of antiseptic.

But _she_ wasn't here.

Jennifer walked around the room uneasily. Who had she been expecting to find here? Why couldn't she remember? It had seemed so important a few seconds ago. Jennifer felt silly. Scatterbrained. And a little lonely too.

One of the drawings on the wall was of a large flying fish. Beneath it, the cute picture depicted children playing happily together, holding a line that was tied to the fish. Above this picture was a drawing of a rabbit. For some reason, Jennifer got the impression that it meant a lot to its owner. The fish drawing wasn't labeled but the rabbit one was. Rabbit. It looked like someone had scratched out a mistake that read (_raper, rapist) _rabbit misspelled.

There was another door, on the wall facing against the bed. The unlucky girl thought she heard a voice coming from the other side so she decided to investigate.

This room was even less well lit than the sickroom. It was a little clinic. A little sick bay. And there were people here, two of them. One was a large man, sitting hunched over at a cramped, little study desk. The other person was a girl, but not a young child. She was a tall, a girl standing on the precipice of adulthood, a teenager wearing a yellow shirt and looking down so that her brown hair concealed her eyes. It seemed like she was holding something of herself back and away in a different world.

First Jennifer approached the man, the one closest to her. He seemed to be very busy writing something down on a ledger but still Jennifer wanted to speak to him. His shoulders were slacked but large. An imposing figure of authority. But before Jennifer could even greet him properly, he insulted her:

"Dirty wretch," the man said to Jennifer. "Why are you always shirking your duties?"

_~The unlucky girl met Hoffman, the strict teacher. When Hoffman caught Jennifer looking at him, he snapped at her.~_

Jennifer decided to try the girl next. She was sitting on one of the two examination beds. The one with the leg rests that seemed so high and unkind to the unlucky girl...

"How dirty," the teenage girl said. She refused to look Jennifer in the eye, always looking down at her skirt. Her nails were very short and the skin on her fingers looked like it had been picked a raw, soft pink.

_~The unlucky girl met Clara, the Frightened Princess. As the Princess looked down, she spoke to the girl with a feeble voice.~_

"Dirty wretch," Hoffman said behind Jennifer, quietly. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed, a nasty short brown sound. The laughter that might accompany a perverse little joke. Only there was no joke here in this room. There was only Jennifer and Clara and Hoffman and the wells felt like they were stuffed with morbid secrets...

Jennifer didn't like this place. A clinic should be a safe place. Like the sick bay in the other room. A place of goodness and refuge from the pain of the world. But this room felt small, and closed, and dreary, and the people here were hunched over figures who cared only for themselves. The very atmosphere of the room was heavy with an indescribable sadness. The poor lighting didn't help.

_And the smell..._

It was too clean. Too pungent with antiseptic and chlorine. The aroma that was meant to mask and hide other odors, dirtier odors...

Jennifer moved to leave the room through a door on the other side of the cramped examination space but her progression brought her against a small little cabinet. Jennifer didn't even give it a sideward glance, she would have passed by it completely, but when she approached it Clara jumped from the examination bed and the unlucky girl froze. The Frightened Princess pushed Jennifer away from the cabinet, finally looking her in the eyes.

"Don't look," she said while shaking her head. She was in tears.

Jennifer left the room, nearly running. Out in the hallway, she leaned against the door, panting. The air outside was better. Less congested with some horrible miasma that infested that room. She moved back toward the line of windows that showcased the sky. Yes, that helped too: the lightness her head felt from that view. Soon, Jennifer felt better.

She moved down the hall, back into the first class guest sector lobby, back to the door that had led her to this place. She slid it open, climbed down the staircase, and walked through the door into the cargo bay.

There was a butterfly here!

Jennifer saw it fluttering near the matted floor. A beautiful green, little thing. She tried to approach it but it soared higher and away, behind the cargo crates, into the high hallway and out of sight. And then something large and bulky followed. A fat, little girl with an awkward gait.

Jennifer followed, down the hall. The unlucky girl reached the fork that parted one way to the filth room in which she had awakened tied up and another yet unexplored door. But this unexplored door was ajar and at its base was a boy peering back and forth warily. Jennifer approached and he fled.

Jennifer opened the door and entered the darkness beyond. Here there were the sounds of relentlessly chugging machinery. The unlucky girl approached the smoking generator and was shocked to see something inside a caged-off area. A brown shape swinging, suspended by rope. Jennifer found a door in the chain link fence and stepped into the area.

The sight broke her heart. The brown shape was a dog bound by heavy rope, it's tail dropping down, unsupported. It whined sadly as it rocked like a pendulum and Jennifer wanted nothing more than to free the poor, little thing. But the knots wouldn't yield under her fingers and as she struggled, the bindings actually seemed to tighten. Jennifer eventually was forced to step back when the dog gave a pained yelp when one of its legs hitched higher. She could seriously harm the dog if she continued.

_~The dog was all alone, tied up and hung from the ceiling. With no means to cut the ropes and free him, the unlucky girl could only stand and watch the poor creature struggle...~ _

She patted the dog sympathetically but it was all she could do... She promised to return and then left the noisy space, refusing to look back at her helpless friend.

**5**

Truthfully, Jennifer did not know how to proceed.

She felt mildly sick. Not in a motion sick kind of way or a terrified-out-of-her-mind kind of way. Rather, she felt ill in a very personal, very spiritual manner. If asked what exactly ailed her, she would probably not have been able to describe it. Probably, she would have lied and said she felt fine. Not because she was one to dissuade the fears of others, but because, to a point, part of her didn't realize there was something wrong at all.

The fear of something which is inevitable. That's it. That's the closest thing identifiable to the emotions that the unlucky girl felt then, on that airship swimming across the clouds.

So Jennifer wandered around. She felt ungrounded, afloat in a strange place, unsure of where to go or how to proceed. So she decided to find her bearings, she decided to map out her place on the airship and identify the different floors and rooms.

(_Just like she had when she had first come to the Orphanage all those years ago..._)

For starters, the airship seemed to be divided into two floors. The first, lower floor was very ruggedly built. Cold metal loomed out over a padded floor and if she looked out, into the darkness that appeared at her sides, she thought she could see a rippling canvas of fabric whipping in the wind. But that may have been her imagination. It really was too dark to tell. The bottom floor was dirty and thick with the smell of gasoline and metal. It was also cold and badly insulated, the metal echoes from the machinery that kept the airship afloat sounded plainly and loudly around her rhythmically. The second, higher floor was completely different. Paneled and closed in and decorated wildly. The sounds of machinery could be heard up here, sure (you couldn't really escape those awful sounds anywhere on the ship). But they were quieter, as if they were further away.

It seemed fitting, the higher class lorded over the lower class from above, from their shielded haven.

_~The unlucky girl met Diana, the strong-willed Princess. As she gathered her courage to speak to the Princess, the Princess cursed:~_

"She's such a pain!"

Diana was sitting at a table in the Sector 10 Crew Cabin, in a space surrounded by shabby looking bunk beds hanging off the walls. The strong-willed Princess was beautiful in a scary kind of way. Like a lion or tiger could be beautiful. Like a ravenous predator might appear beautiful to its prey. She was a girl bordering on womanhood, maybe she had already taken her first shaky steps over that precipice, but in another way, she still seemed very much like a child. She was not older than Clara in the sickbay, at least. She was an obstinate girl sitting at a table, a red tipped wine bottles, so of course Jennifer fell in love with her at first sight. Not in the romantic sense, rather in a terrified, admiring sort of way. Her beauty, her bravery, her confidence, her strong will—the unlucky girl thought then that the strong-willed Princess was everything she hoped to one day be.

_~The unlucky girl met Eleanor, the Princess as cold as ice. Inside the acrid room, the Princess shot an icy glare and said:~_

"Yes, she is a pain."

Eleanor was sitting in a horrible, squalid space between lined shelves of flapping, screeching chickens. They were tiny little things that carefully inspected their tiny homes with beady eyes. The smell was unbelievable, the aroma of bird shit and feathers and filth wormed all around in a tepid stew of heat. My god, was it hot. Jennifer actually stepped back when she first entered the Starboard Livestock Room. Not from the smell, but from the heat. It was warmer here than in any other room in the airship. The struggling and shuffling chickens stuck in their wire cages worked together to capture their body heat in this room and the leather walls was a very good insulter, not only for the smell, but the heat.

And Eleanor stood in the midst of this awful hell of taste and sight and didn't look ruffled at all. She was short girl dressed in a simple darkly yellow dress and her hair was cut short, in a bowl shape. Jennifer almost overlooked it because of all the chickens around, but the cold Princess was actually holding something in her right hand: an empty birdcage. But she never even looked at the unlucky girl, she had eyes only for the terrible, strutting chickens all around her.

_~The unlucky girl met Wendy, the lonely Princess. The Princess saw that the girl was confused, so she smiled gently and said:~_

"You're the new girl aren't you?" Wendy coughed, pulling a fist in front of her mouth. "I'm Wendy. It's nice to meet you." But the cough forced her attention away.

Jennifer liked Wendy immediately. She wasn't like anyone else the unlucky girl had met yet on the airship. The lonely Princess was crouched down, in the back of Port Livestock Room, near a pile of empty cages. This room smelled just as strongly as the Starboard Livestock Room, but it was a different stench. Not the dry essence of birds squirming over their own shit that burned your throat, this was an aroma you could easily relate to a cozy old farm. With nice, stupid animals wandering around and a fat little farmer with a pitchfork working the fields. Like that rhyme, old Macdougal had a farm. And, unlike the room with the cold Princess, there was no ever-present heat. There were only a few animals caged in this room. A filthy pig and two little, shivering goats were in their pens.

"She feels unwell when she's lonely." Wendy said, looking down solemnly at a white rabbit in a cage. "Are you sad when you're alone?"

But before Jennifer had the time to answer: to say yes (yes, she loathed to be alone—to be alone sickened her and was, unmistakably the worst feeling in the world), Wendy spoke again:

"Are you looking for a butterfly? I saw one flying around on the first floor."

Was there really a butterfly on the upper deck? There hadn't been one when she had checked the first class guest sector, but maybe she should explore further into the airship? It was undoubtedly a huge construct, there must be much more to it...

When the unlucky girl turned to leave the room and begin her search, the lonely princess bowed her head and sighed. "No one wants to be alone."

**6**

In the 3rd Passenger Corridor there was the sound of someone sobbing. The unlucky girl listened carefully to the sad sound and concluded that it was coming from somewhere above.

Jennifer looked ahead, toward the end of the passage. On the floor, on all fours, there was a large woman working, wiping angrily at the floor with a dirty rag. When the unlucky girl proceeded down the hall, toward this woman, a fat boy stuck his head out of a door to her right. The obese boy looked at Jennifer, turned and looked down the hall at the cleaning woman, grinned broadly, and then pulled Jennifer into the men's lavatory.

_~The unlucky girl met Xavier, the gluttonous Prince. As the Prince chewed with his mouth full, he spoke to her.~_

_ "_Heh heh... Did you hear the news?" Xavier said, sagely. He stood in the doorway of an open stall, grinning up at Jennifer as if she were something small and simple. The boy was filthy, always. His striped shirt was littered with crumbs and stains, one side awkwardly untucked into his shorts. And for such a large boy, he always spoke in such a low whisper... It unsettled the unlucky girl. "Witches must love to clean. They always carry brooms, right? That witch over there has only got rags, though... Well, you should clean up like they do or else spooky things will come and do it!"

_Witches... Spooky things... _Jennifer thought that he must be talking about the cleaning lady back outside, at the end of the hall...

The sallow, flower wall paper made the unlucky girl's stomach churn.

"Heh heh... Did you hear the latest?" the gluttonous Prince asked, always eager to share his disjointed thoughts. "The witch keeps a very important key. I forget what the key's for, though."

_ Key?_

"I'm telling you... We're in trouble now," Xavier said, in a whisper that made her shiver when he lifted his round belly and slapped it while it bounced wildly. "You're especially dirty, so the spooky things are sure to come and clean you up. Even Mr. Hoffman said you have to clean up, or else get cleaned up," the gluttonous Prince warned, darkly.

The unlucky girl retreated, toward the door, but first she had a chance to look into the lavatory's oval sink mirror, on the wall to her right. Could it be because it was cracked? For a moment, the reflection in the mirror looked like an old orphanage... And for a moment, Jennifer felt like that girl, Alice, from the book, _Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There_. The sequel to _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_. Alice who entered the mirror and found the Looking-Glass Land beyond it to be a strange and foreign alternate world... Yes, that's how Jennifer felt then, looking into that oval mirror.

Back outside, in the 3rd Passenger Corridor, Jennifer could hear the sobbing again. She proceeded down the way, toward the cleaning woman. Yes, Jennifer's suspicions had been correct, there were stairs here. Large metal stars that ascended upward, toward an unseen room.

_~The unlucky girl met Martha, the Queen of cleaning. The Queen glared at Jennifer as if she were filthier than dirt itself.~_

The large woman sat up, quickly inspecting Jennifer from foot to head, before finally dismissing her with a flick of her rag. "Filthy wretch." Then the woman returned to her work, ignoring Jennifer and favoring the floor.

The unlucky girl moved toward the staircase, but was sidelined by a sudden strange noise.

"Choo choo!"

_Choo choo?_

Jennifer's curiosity got the best of her. She put the crying coming from the end of the stairs aside and proceeded toward a door to her left, across from the large Queen of cleaning.

On the other side of this door, Jennifer found herself in the Smoking Room. A dim sitting room lined with sofa chairs installed into the wall, a grandfather clock and a single small table, a slowly spinning ceiling fan mimicking the movement of a boy settled on the room's floor. This boy was the origin of the _choo choo _sounds, he guided a little toy train as he circled round and round and made his play train noises.

_~The unlucky girl met Thomas, the mischievous Prince. The Prince, who'd been busy with his antics, finally stopped and spoke to the girl:~_

"A new girl, a new girl!" The boy said. He was filthy, but not like Xavier, the gluttonous Prince had been. This boy's clothes were tattered in grime and worn savagely almost. He had been wearing these clothes for a long time—he refused anything else. His incessantly repeated behavior made him appear stupid to the unlucky girl. "What's she like? Really scrawny..." And then he gave a hitched little laugh.

Jennifer decided to leave the boy be. She moved to leave but again she was distracted by something. There was a newspaper lying on one of the sofa chairs. There was a prominent picture of a dirigible; and airship. The unlucky girl walked over and read the short accompanying article.

' 25 April 1929. The World's Largest Airship to Take Flight. In anticipation of the coming era of airship travel, Britain announced the completion of the world's largest airship. In its long-awaited first flight, it will life off at Cardington and fly to India by way of London. All of Britain eagerly awaits the inaugural ceremony. Along with the Mayor and the Countess, children from the local orphanage will participate in the ribbon-cutting ceremony. '

Something about reading this made Jennifer lightheaded. From somewhere very far away, she thought she heard an approaching explosion of noise. Someone was screaming. Oh no, that was herself. Jennifer put the newspaper down. She sat down on the couch seat and let the mischievous Prince's endless circling lull her into peace until she felt alright again; until she could breathe normally without gasping. She didn't know what that had been about, but she didn't want to find out. Not yet.

The room had a faint resin smell of tobacco and fumes. That also helped, somewhat.

Jennifer left the Smoking Room. In the 3rd Passenger Corridor, she was again greeted by the sound of crying and the large woman cleaning, angrily. She moved to the stairs, taking note of the words and pointing arrow drawn onto the wall next to the staircase: Clover Field.

**7**

Upstairs, the unlucky girl found herself in the Guest Room Hall. It was lavish, of course, just like the First Class Guest Sector had been. The walls were beautifully paneled wood, the floor was carpeted thickly, there was even a statue of a nude child reaching upward upon a pedestal, little stone wings indicating an angelic nature. Next to this sculpture was the source of the crying that Jennifer had been hearing for a while now. There was a small, crouched figure—a girl. She was stooped in a fetal position, weeping over a small, green butterf—

A butterfly!

_~The unlucky girl met Olivia, the tearful Princess. As the Princess cried on, the girl gathered her courage and spoke to her... The tearful Princess just cried on and on.~_

Was the little green insect Olivia's? Jennifer tried to ask, but the weeping girl ignored her and just sobbed on and on. Eventually Jennifer grew impatient and, against her better judgment and self-control, moved toward the green butterfly on the floor, reaching to take it—

A fork slammed down, piercing the butterfly, dangerously close to hitting Jennifer's hand. The unlucky girl jumped at the motion, and found Olivia standing, red puffy eyes glaring at her angrily.

"You deserve to be gobbled up," the tearful Princess said, nastily, as she walked away, down the stairs and out of sight.

Jennifer took a few deep breaths to clear her bewilderment. When she was calm, she turned her attention back to the green butterfly pinned under the dessert fork. She lifted the fork, extracting the remains of the butterfly from the sharp prongs. It was dead, of course. Its wings were tattered and mostly fallen off, but it was a butterfly nonetheless. Surely, she thought, this would fulfill the gift requirement. She pocketed the fork and butterfly.

Now that she had found a butterfly, the unlucky girl did not want to stay. Strangely, the upper deck's high class appearance disturbed Jennifer in some strange, underhanded way. She knew that it was only natural that the lower deck scare her—its very nature of cold metal and darkness and alien machine noises was frightening, but why should this extravagant and effuse place unsettle her so? She felt the same way in the First Class Guest Sector. It was a strange feeling. Fear, yes. But fear of what? Fear... Fear of what was to come; fear of something inevitable—something sure to occur. Destined. Ordained. Impending.

_Doomed._

And then Jennifer shivered. That was enough of that.

Before Jennifer turned to head down the stairs and returned the way that would send her to the First Class Guest Sector, she felt obliged to check the many doors that lined this room. There were four, but none of them opened. They were all locked. Interestingly enough, each door had a painted symbol to denote it: one room had a one leaf clover, another two, another three, and the last four. Jennifer figured that this had been drawn by the same person who had lettered the arrow pointing this way as Clover Field. There was something else: next to the Four-leaf clover door was a chair, and upon it was a small little copper leaf. It seemed strangely out of place (but what wasn't on this airship?), and for no real reason at all, Jennifer pocketed it.

Then Jennifer moved, back down the stairs, back through the 3rd Passenger Corridor, through the Sector 10 Crew Cabin, through the noisy Sector 9 Turbine Area with the hanging dog, through the Sector 8 Cargo Bay—

The unlucky girl stopped. Someone was crying ahead. In the cargo storage compartment, somewhat was crouched, stooped in a fetal position, weeping... Olivia? Was it the tearful Princess again?

Jennifer approached slowly, unsure of what to do or say to comfort her—the image of the angrily slammed fork still prominent in her mind—but before she completely reached the weeping figure, she froze.

This wasn't Olivia.

This pale creature lifted its head, turned to look at the unlucky girl, revealing a bald little head and dark holes where its eyes and mouth should have been.

_An imp_.

The little creature rose and stepped gangly toward the unlucky girl and all she could do was scream and scream and scream.

**8**

When the little thing jumped at her, Jennifer toppled backwards, crawling away. The imp was horrifying. Its skin was pale and ragged and all it wore was this black rag draped around it and its _face_. That was the worst thing. Jennifer had once been told that eyes were the windows to the soul. Well, in these black eyes you could see only hell.

The imp staggered to its feet and stepped after the unlucky girl, reaching for her legs. Jennifer kicked out, forcing the creature backwards, she looked around, but there was nothing in this hallway that she could use to defend herself. In her desperation, she plunged her hands into her pockets and found the copper leaf, the dog collar, the fork—

The dessert fork!

It wasn't much, Jennifer thought then. But it was sharp and long and that would have to be good enough. The imp lunged after Jennifer, reaching for her, and the unlucky girl closed her eyes, turned her head, and stabbed.

The creature screamed a bloodcurdling sound that ended in a strange hiss. The unlucky girl opened her eyes and found that she had plunged the dessert fork into the creature's neck.

In the moment that followed, Jennifer actually considered _apologizing_. _Oh, I'm sorry about stabbing you—are you okay?_ That's how terrified and confused she was. She let go of the fork, letting it hang from the creature's fleshy skin. The imp stumbled; the creature grasped up and pulled the fork out of its own neck—three long prongs revealing three deep gouges, and the creature slumped, blood gushing from its wounds.

The unlucky girl did not wait around, she stepped over the creature and fled down the passage, through the cargo storage area, and into the Sector 8 Stairway.

**9**

In the Sector 8 Stairway, a child reading aloud could be heard faintly... The unlucky girl listened.

"Once upon a time... There was an unlucky girl..."

Jennifer ascended the stairs, toward the First Class Guest Sector.

"All she want-All she wanted was to be happy. So, she went to a clo-clover field."

As the reading child stuttered on, the unlucky girl pulled the sliding door open and stepped through.

"She found a one-leaf clover... but she dropped it on the road..."

In the fork that led left, right, and center, she paused for a moment, determining that the reading child was coming somewhere from the right. For a second, she considered heading over and peeking into the rooms through the keyhole, but then thought better of it. She had been warned before that peeping was... peeping was... was what? Jennifer blinked. She didn't know.

"She found a two-leaf clover... But it slip-but it slipped into the sh-shadows... Shadows."

As Jennifer moved forward, down the hall toward the gift box door, she reached into her pocket and readied the remains of the green butterfly.

"She found a three-leaf clover... but a witch hid it away."

She read the posted sign taped above the receptacle box again: THIS MONTH'S GIFT: A BEAUTIFUL BUTTERFLY. ONE PER PERSON.

"She wanted to find a four-leaf clover... but she was too unlucky."

Looking at the crumpled butterfly in her palm, the unlucky girl had misgivings. Even so, she lifted the strange box's lid and scooped the remains of the green insect inside.

And then the gift box door spoke: "You call this a beautiful butterfly? Are you blind?" A small cabinet box emerged at the base of the door, suddenly enough to cause Jennifer to gasp. The tattered butterfly lay inside, rejected as a gift and returned to Jennifer. "Give me a beautiful, beautiful butterfly, and then you shall be invited to join the Aristocrat Club..."

Dejected, the unlucky girl turned and walked back down the hall. Two girls ran out from the left hallway. Probably the same girls who had been reading the story aloud. Jennifer followed after them but hesitated in the main corridor. The girls exited through the sliding door that would lead them down into the lower deck, but Jennifer saw that one of the girls had actually dropped something. When the unlucky girl was alone, she moved to pick it up. It was a key. A key with a twisting shaft that ended in a single leaf adornment.

A one-leaf key.

_A clover._

_ She found a one-leaf clover, but she dropped it on the road._

And then the unlucky girl knew that this key would open the one-leaf clover door in the Guest Room Hall.

So she went, into the Sector 8 Stairway—

There was a large man standing on top of the stairs, directly before her on the other side of the door. He was garbed in a brown coat and cap, and as he towered over Jennifer, he offered her something: a storybook.

_~In front of the unlucky girl stood a man in a brown coat that she had never seen before. The man quietly handed her a storybook...~_

The unlucky girl took the handmade storybook, just as she had with the boy in the bus, almost instinctively. She turned to the cover and began to read:

**10**

" 'The Clover Field.'

"Once upon a time, there was an unlucky girl.

"All she wanted was to be happy. So she went to a clover field.

"She found a one-leaf clover, but she dropped it on the road.

"She found a two-leaf clover, but it slipped into the shadows.

"She found a three-leaf clover, but a witch hid it away.

"She wanted to find a four-leaf clover, but she was too unlucky."

**11**

When the unlucky girl looked away from the storybook, the strange man was gone.

Jennifer proceeded down the stairs and into the Sector 8 Cargo Bay, but not before hesitating. Her earlier encounter with the imp was still forefront in her mind and she dreaded stepping into the corridor and seeing the little creature's fallen body, the bloody dessert fork lying near by... But to the unlucky girl's surprise, she couldn't find the imp's corpse. It was just... gone. No little spooky thing, no blood, no fork, no nothing. It was all gone. It was as if it had never been—as if Jennifer had imagined the entire experience. Bewildered (but relieved), the unlucky girl proceeded into the hallway—

A door to her right was open. She stuck her head inside but saw no signs of movement from within the room, and so, now sure that there was no unexpected surprise waiting for her inside (like an another imp), she stepped into the dark room. Inside she found various broadcasting equipment. She flicked a switch and a familiar ringing sounded. The same ringing she had heard earlier when she had been bound inside the Filth Room. The same ringing she had heard during the funeral... There was a hole in the wall. Actually, on the walls were drawn cat faces and eyes, but where one of the eyes should have been there was instead a hole that looked into the next room. It was the only source of light in this dark room. The unlucky girl peered inside and saw the same Filth Room in which she had first awoken, bound to a metal pillar.

Jennifer realized that this must be where the nasty little boy had been watching her from when he had taunted her, earlier. And if this was where he had watched and spoken to her from, then this was where he had activated the machinery that had freed her... This was where he had activated the machinery that had lowered those big scissors that had been strong enough to cut through her bindings...

The unlucky girl was right. There was a button next to the hole. Jennifer pressed it and the sound of machinery started again. She looked into the hole and saw that the scissors had been lowered into reach.

Jennifer moved back into the Sector 8 Cargo Bay hallway and into the Filth Room, retrieving the now lowered scissors. And as the unlucky girl examined the rather rusty scissors, they suddenly spoke:

"No thanks necessary... No thanks necessary... You might have been better off bound than being free to feel pain. So scary!"

With the scissors in hand, the unlucky girl now had what she needed to free the dog... Her friend...

From behind, a voice spoke. Jennifer jumped, she had forgotten that the scarecrow, the Bucket Knight, was in this room. And now it spoke: "...If memory serves me correctly, the green butterfly you offered was too filthy, and was rejected. Your beloved friend is tied up and hanging by a rope. Cut the rope and remember... Remember the name of your friend. Remember your bond with him... That's your only clue."

**12**

In the Sector 9 Turbine Area, Jennifer finally cut down the whimpering dog. The unlucky girl cut the ropes with the scissors and freed the dog. Free from captivity, the dog seemed quite happy. However, the stood simply stood there and wouldn't move. It looked up at the girl as if wanting something, waiting for her reaction.

Jennifer didn't miss a beat. Just like the first time, she removed the dog collar from her pocket and kneeled down to place it around the golden dog's neck. Inside of the collar was scrawled the name: Brown. The unlucky girl remembered her friend, remembered his name, remembered this dog.

"Brown!" she called, and the dog barked in response. The unlucky girl laughed. At that moment, she didn't feel quite so unlucky.

**13**

Jennifer and Brown moved through the Sector 9 Turbine Area, through the Sector 10 Crew Cabin, and back to 3rd Passenger Corridor. And here in this hall that ended in a metal stairway, the unlucky girl saw something that she wished with all her heart that she could forget.

Martha, the Queen of cleaning, tumbled down the metal stairs, slamming her heavy body on the steps. She turned, saw the unlucky girl standing further off, at the end of the passage. Saw her standing there, frozen at the sight, with her loyal dog, Brown, and she screamed for help. She lunged out, reaching between the stairway bars, screaming, pleading. Help. Help. Help. And then she was lifted away. Something from out of sight grabbed her lower body, grabbed and then lifted her, pulled her away from the eyeshot of Jennifer, her heavy bottom hitting each step on her way up. But even if the unlucky girl couldn't see the woman anymore, she could still hear her. Hear her scream and cry out as she was beaten and hauled. And when she stopped screaming, when she couldn't scream anymore, that's when it was the worst. That's when Jennifer wanted to throw up.

The unlucky girl didn't know how long she stood there, her body frozen in waves of searing heat and numbing cold, but eventually Brown nudged her gently. She blinked and tasted bile in her mouth. She swallowed and then turned to Brown, who barked. She nodded. She would be okay. She knew she had to do this. She must.

Jennifer urged her paralyzed legs onward, she climbed the steps and entered the Guest Room Hall, and what she found there very nearly made her scream.

Martha's hat was on the floor. That's all that was left of her.

The unlucky girl scooped it up. The hat worn by Martha, who was accused of being a witch.

While she was looking at it, Brown approached and sniffed it once. Then he turned and walked toward the two-leaf clover door. The dog pawed at the door, indicating that whatever it had smelled on the hat, whatever odor, it was now emanating from beyond this door. In other words, Martha, the Queen of cleaning, was on the other side of this door. In order to find out what had become of Martha, she would first have to find the two-leaf key. But for now...

Jennifer used the one-leaf key to unlock the one-leaf clover door. She pulled open the sliding door and entered. On the other side she found splitting hallways with many passenger bedroom doors; this was the 2nd Passenger Corridor. And just like any part of the upper deck, it was done comfortably with paneled walls and carpeting. And it was here that Jennifer found Nicholas.

_~The unlucky girl met Nicholas, the sloppy Prince. With a look of annoyance, the Prince clicked his tongue and mumbled at her.~_

"Why you! Go away! Go away!" Nicholas was leaning against the paneled wall strangely, one hand on the wall, one on his side, his foot tapping away to an unheard beat. "... I'm a shadow, a shadow."

_Shadow?_

_She found a two-leaf clover, but it slipped into the shadows._

Unsure (but without a better idea), the unlucky girl looked at the sloppy Prince's shadow, illuminated across the hallway space, over a carpet that lined the way. Her suspicion was correct: tucked under the carpet was a key. This key also had a twisting shaft and a single leaf adornment, but it also had a missing end that made the key look like it might be missing a leaf. She fetched the copper leaf she had found earlier from her pocket and attached it to the bare end. It was a perfect fit—the one-leaf key became a two-leaf key. And although it might seem like a trivial thing (the adornment, after all, did not affect the bit (the end of the key that fits into the keyhole to disengage the lock), but Jennifer somehow knew that if she had tried to open the door with the key that only had one leaf, even this key, the correct key, it would simply not open. The unlucky girl accepted all this in the same way she accepted talking doors and keys and scarecrows.

Nicholas fled away, down the hall, turning a corner out of sight. Jennifer considered chasing after him briefly, but decided against it. If he didn't want to be caught, she wouldn't be able to find him. That's just how it was. Besides, now that she had the two-leaf key, she would now be able to enter the two-leaf clover door in the Guest Room Hall. So she turned back and walked back down the hall, back in the so-called Clover Field.

The unlucky girl unlocked the two-leaf clover door with the two-leaf key, pulled open the sliding door, and stepped into the 1st Passenger Corridor. Jennifer could see right away that it was another area of the airship similar to the 2nd Passenger Corridor—that is to say, splitting hallways with many passenger bedroom doors. But there were fewer rooms in this corridor, there were only about half as many bedrooms. Also, it seemed the hallway had been made impassable with a blockade. Trays and chairs and tables had been stacked in a way that blocked the hallway and stopped Jennifer from exploring the rest of the corridors. All of it had been nailed together into an unwieldy mess that made it impossible to unstuck or move aside with only Jennifer's strength. And maybe the unlucky girl could climb over it, but she didn't want to risk putting her weight on the construction only to find that it was incapable of carrying her weight and it collapsed underneath her, sending her crashing to the floor. That's all she needed, really. To fracture an ankle or crack her skull. So no, Jennifer decided it might be best if she did not struggle with the blockade.

Instead, Jennifer did what she had originally intended. She held Martha's hat out to Brown. The great dog sniffed the cap intently before turning to a door to the left of where she had entered. Brown began scratching against its base, barking once to gather the unlucky girl's attention. Jennifer understood. She pushed the door open and stepped into Room 9.

This cabin was pitch black—completely without light. Jennifer wandered inside and banged her leg against something sharp. When she yelped out in pain, Brown barked in alarm and she had to comfort the dog. She couldn't see anything. She bumbled around in the dark for a while before deciding to leave back into the outside corridors. She needed to find a way to see. So she called upon Brown, who pushed his wet nose against her hand in the dark. Again she offered him the Queen of cleaning's hat again. The dog sniffed it and walked off into the dark. Jennifer followed by grabbing onto his side and soon they were stopped in the middle of the room. Brown was pawing and barking at something on the floor. Jennifer grasped the object on the floor and found that it was a dirty rag. It smelled rankly of cleaning detergents.

And then, in the dark room, an unknown occupant spoke in a shrill voice. "...I was a mighty witch. Yet now, I am but a powerless wretch. Rubbish and dust... My precious, precious key. I hid it secretly... I hid it in a pure and dirty place. Your eyes cannot find it. You are truly a poor, unlucky girl..." And then the voice was gone and Jennifer didn't know if she was really alone, or if there was someone in the dark with her. Was it Martha? Was she the witch? Was she now rubbish and dust?

Jennifer left the cabin, dirty rag in hand. Outside, she saw the Cafeteria. With nothing better to do, she stepped inside. Inside was an expansive hall, eight tables laid out with an accompanying bar and line of windows that viewed out into the passing night sky. The dining room was dark, but not nearly as much as Room 9 had been. She could at least see in this room. But... Something was odd. All of the tables were set with tableware and flower vases, but there were a few platters and utensils strewn on the floor. All but two of the tables were tucked with white tablecloth, but one table was missing it entirely and another seemed to have had its sheet yanked, sending everything sitting on its face cascading onto the floor. Jennifer proceeded down the hall, between the tables, toward the bar, cautiously, while Brown split off to wander beneath the tablecloths, investigating this new place with a wagging tail. Above the bar was the only light source, a single ceiling light.

On the bar was a newspaper. Jennifer tried to read the prominent headline: KENNEDY ASSASSIN—

_No._

Jennifer was suddenly struck by a sudden sense of vertigo. She leaned against the bar, trying to clear her head.

_It's too soon._

The unlucky pushed the newspaper away. That really helped. Stepping away from the newsprint breathed life into her and cleared her dizzy mind. When she felt okay again, she chanced a look at the newspaper again.

_That happens over 30 years later._

But, strangely, she couldn't read the headline anymore. The letters and words had jumbled. Some were blurred, some were upside down, and a few letters were just gone. It had become unreadable. And Jennifer understood that this was for the best.

_ Not now. Not then._

The unlucky girl put the issue of the newspaper out of her mind and focused on the item that was lying behind the bar. Jennifer bent to pick it up—a paring knife. A small, sharp knife used for peeling fruit. The unlucky girl remembered her encounter with the imp earlier in the Sector 8 Cargo Bay. She had lost the fork in that confrontation. She didn't like the idea of being unarmed if she was attacked again. She pocketed the knife.

She felt strange with the knife in her pocket. Nothing that the unlucky girl had carried so far, had she carried with the express intention of using as a weapon. Keys and slips of paper and collars and rags, but this... This was different. Even the fork she had used to stab the imp, she had merely pocketed by accident. But now, now she carried the knife for one express purpose. And even if that purpose was merely her own defense, Jennifer felt weighted. Burdened. Encumbered.

Afflicted, plagued.

When the unlucky girl moved from behind the bar space and Brown approached, he whimpered when he saw the expression that Jennifer wore then. She tried to smile for him but it felt raggedly forced so she dropped it and moved on.

**14**

Jennifer followed Brown into the 1st Passenger Corridor, through Guest Room Hall, down the stairway into the 3rd Passenger Corridor, through the Sector 10 Crew Cabin, past the strong-willed Princess (who glared), and into Sector 11 Maintenance. Earlier in the Cafeteria she had let Brown sniff the dirty rag they had found in the Room 9 cabin and now the dog energetically led her along the aroma trail, obviously happy to be doing something that might distract his master from whatever dark thoughts she had been muddling in back in the Cafeteria.

Inside the Sector 11 Maintenance area, Brown bit and began to pull at a fabric wall. Jennifer approached the struggling dog, looking around the maintenance area. It was strange, she concluded. This section of the wall was the only one made of cloth, every other wall was metal. Brown's efforts were eventually rewarded—the mesh string that held it in place tore and the piece of fabric crumpled on the floor, revealing an interior space behind it. The unlucky girl praised the dog for its find, patting its head. Inside, just as Jennifer had expected, was the three-leaf key.

_She found a three-leaf clover, but a witch hid it away._

With this in hand, the unlucky girl and Brown continued down the Sector 11 Maintenance passage, through the Smoking Room (which was now empty of Thomas, under the spinning fan), into the 3rd Passenger Corridor, up the stairway, and into the Guest Room Hall.

Jennifer unlocked the three-leaf clover door with the three-leaf key, but before she pulled open the sliding door, she paused a moment to look back, at the four-leaf clover door. She remembered the last line of the "Unlucky Clover Field" story.

_She wanted to find a four-leaf clover, but she was too unlucky._

Something told her that she wouldn't be opening this last door.

The unlucky girl pulled open the three-leaf clover door and stepped inside, into the 1st Passenger Corridor. Now, the she had access to the previously blocked off portion of this area. Slowly, she proceeded down the hall. But she saw nothing strange at first. She followed the corridors, turning when forced, counting the cabin doors as she passed them by. Eventually she came upon the same blockade of trays and tables that had impeded her before, only now of course she was on its opposite side...

The unlucky girl turned back to the corridors, ready to begin her search for a clue again, and saw something strange: light. Walking directly ahead from the blockade, on the second door on her left, light was streaming out from the edges of the door, from an open crack between the door and the frame. Someone was inside. Someone had neglected to fully close the door. She would have overlooked it—she would have been forced to check each individual cabin... But now...

Jennifer peered into the open crack.

And inside the room, Jennifer saw the same fat girl she had seen earlier. The same fat girl she had seen chasing after the green butterfly in the Sector 8 Cargo Bay. She was sitting spread legged on the floor, and she was giggling as she looked up at something that she was holding in her hands. It was an... an... An insect collector's box. But there was only one catalogued item: an orange butterfly.

Was this her monthly gift?

The unlucky girl decided to go ahead and step inside. Into cabin Room 11. Maybe this girl would be able to help her find a butterfly... But when she approached the fat girl, she quickly pounced to the floor, crawled away next to the bed, and covered her treasure with her bulky body.

_~The unlucky girl met Amanda, the small-hearted Princess. The Princess's round face loomed large as she spoke to the girl.~ _

From the floor, the fat girl wheezed out: "I found this butterfly!" She buried her head into her arms and shook angrily. "It's mine. I won't give it to you! I won't lose to you!"

Jennifer didn't know how to respond to this. She wanted to soothe the girl, to tell her that she didn't intend to steal her butterfly, but when she touched Amanda's shoulder, she quivered wildly and said, "You dirty newcomer. Out with you...!"

When the unlucky girl saw that the small-hearted Princess had decided to neither say any more or move from her position next to the bed, she left, exiting the room.

Outside, when Jennifer had stepped away from the door and further off into the corridor, she heard the door behind her slide open. Amanda waddled out, giggling. She was no longer carrying her insect case, instead holding something gingerly in the palm of her hand. She seemed exited until she saw the unlucky girl. Her grin turned into a grimace of surprise, her mouth opening stupidly. Then, it was almost as if she thought better of the situation. She regained her grin and she held up her hand, as if to taunt Jennifer with what she held there. She plucked it up, holding it for the unlucky girl to see: a large orange butterfly with clashing black camouflage eye dots. Showing off her gift—the gift that would place her in higher esteem than the gift-less unlucky girl. But then she stepped back, her courage wavered and she turned frightened again, and she fled, away from Jennifer and out of sight.

The unlucky girl didn't want to admit it, but she was happy to see her go.

**15**

Back inside Room 11, Jennifer retrieved the insect case Amanda had left behind on the floor. She didn't know if it would work, but maybe Brown could retrieve the scent of a butterfly from it and lead her to one? The unlucky girl sighed. Just how many butterflies could one airship hold, anyways?

Brown didn't have to smell it for long, he barked almost immediately and led her out of the room, into the 1st Passenger Corridor, between the halls and doors until they reached a corridor that lined the side of the airship, revealing a line of windows.

Sitting upon a handrail here, against the glass, was a single electric blue butterfly. It was beautiful. It was perfect, it would make a great gift. Jennifer planned to approach it silently and capture it, but she forgot to account for Brown. The dog barked eagerly at the butterfly, obviously trying to tell the unlucky girl that they had reached the end of the smell trail, but it had the second effect of surprising the butterfly into taking off. It took off, fluttering over Jennifer's head and flying into the nearest corridor. The unlucky girl followed. The blue butterfly was just ahead, Jennifer walked toward it, ready to capture it... No, not one. It was two. Now it was two blue butterflies flying directly ahead. When Jennifer approached, again they fled away. The unlucky girl followed. But upon turning a corner, again she saw that she was wrong. No, it wasn't two butterflies—it was four. The flying, dancing butterflies again multiplied. Now eight. Jennifer realized that she was running now. Running to keep up and count the fluttering butterflies. She had turned too many corners, passed too many doors, and somewhere from behind, Brown was barking, agitated by her behavior. The blue butterflies multiplied one last time, now too many to count. They formed a steady blue line rounding one last corner and they converged on a door at the end of the corridor. The unlucky girl thought that perhaps they were perching to rest, but no, again she was wrong. They were actually squirming into the door's crack, escaping into the next room.

Jennifer stopped outside this door, panting. That had been a rather strange experience. For a moment, she had almost felt possessed. Electric blue butterflies had lead her on, and they had been all she could see... Where was she now, anyways? Which door was this? She honestly didn't know...

The unlucky girl stepped through. She found herself in the Guest Room Hall. She was unsettled for a moment, she wasn't expecting to be brought here. She looked around the room, looking for the multitude of butterflies that she had seen flee into this room, but she only saw one. A single blue butterfly resting against a wall.

And that's when everything went terribly, terribly wrong and this dream became a nightmare.

**16**

Jennifer approached, slowly, not wanting to scare it away. It really was a beautiful thing, she thought then. She had thought its coloring was electric blue before, but no. That wasn't apt enough—it's coloring was too vivid; too bright. Surely, this butterfly would make a satisfactory gift.

The butterfly took off, flapping its gorgeous wings. It actually left a faint residue of blue sparkles wherever it flittered. Gorgeous.

Something was being pounded. A slamming noise coming from another room.

The unlucky girl watched as the blue butterfly danced around her, her thoughts focusing on the act of catching this marvelous insect and presenting it to the gift box.

Now there was a swishing sound accompanying the thudding, impact noises. A lonely metal wait echoed out, the soundtrack of the airship.

_Place wastepaper in the rubbish bin and laundry in the filth room..._

As the butterfly fluttered and clover-leaf doors around the hall rattled open, Jennifer could hear voices. But not actual voices, these were memories—sounds in her head.

_Stray Dog gives us sweets..._

Brooms were emerging from the slowly opening doors. Brooms gripped in strangely pale, small hands... The unlucky girl retrieved the paring knife from her pocket, grasping it with taught knuckles.

_Stray Dog kidnaps kids..._

Uncomfortably, Jennifer realized that she was surrounded. The butterfly flittered closer and closer to the ceiling light overhead.

_ Stray Dog comes at night..._

Those old stories, the stories they used to tell, that she used to tell... The stories that let her control everybody.

_Children who don't clean up will be punished..._

The stories that turned everything into a nightmare. The stories that transformed the orphanage from a heaven, into a hell...

_Hello, boys and girls._

The beautiful blue butterfly finally touched the ceiling light and, amidst sparks, it fell away to the floor. Dead.

_It's time for some cleaning._

They came out, the imps. Hordes of tiny little creatures, waist high devils, some carrying brooms, some not, but all of them with the same holes for eyes, the same awful, pasty skin, the same high-pitched scream. The same desire to get a hold of Jennifer and clean her away...

The unlucky girl didn't waste any time, while Brown jumped forward, distracting the first wave of the little imps, Jennifer scooped up the blue butterfly from the floor. Then she fled down the stairway, jumping over a tripped imp in the process. But even in the lower deck there was no escape. An imp leapt at her from the base of the stairs, but Jennifer managed to swing her knife, not cutting but managing to knock it away. She sidestepped the rest of the ghoulish little imps in the 3rd Passenger Corridor and fled, Brown at her heels. She ran through the Sector 10 Crew Cabin, but she was momentarily overwhelmed in the bunk bed area. A group of ten imps managed to intercept her. One of the creatures jumped on her back, another straddled her front—then they began to bite and scratch and _thrust_.

Brown bit the imp on her back and ripped it away. Jennifer tried to throw the one hanging from her front off, but it was persistent and another imp managed to strike her thigh sharply with a broom twice.

The pain infuriated her. She stabbed at the imp that had hit her with a broom, stabbing the paring knife into its shoulder twice and it collapsed soundlessly. Then she grabbed the little head of the imp still groping her—she pulled it back as far as she could and then plunged the knife into its back. The creature collapsed off of her, dead weight. Brown fended the rest off with the threat of bark and bite, and then they were off, running down the corridor, into the Sector 9 Turbine Area. They were here too, the monsters, so the unlucky girl ducked into the Starboard Livestock Room. Eleanor was gone, but that was fine. Here, finally, was a haven from the horrid little creatures. Jennifer regained her breath before venturing back out, through the Sector 9 Turbine Area, through the Sector 8 Cargo Bay, dodging lunging imps all the way, toward the—

An imp whacked the unlucky girl, sending her tumbling. Jennifer had been sidestepping the little creatures very easily so far, but this imp... This imp was different. The girl stumbled to her feet, shaking hands raising the knife. Jennifer got a good look at the imp. Yes, this one _was_ different. Instead of a small little head with dark holes, this imp had a strange, slacken rat head. Rat imps. There were two of them, the unlucky girl could see now. And they were _fast_. Where the others imps walked with a strangely dull gait, these creatures managed a brisk pace. They were all the more dangerous because of this. Jennifer couldn't afford to be distracted like this... Already other imps were swarming. Soon she would have a dangerous problem...

The unlucky girl tried to run through, but again the rat imp used its speed to intercept her, swinging its broom at her—

Jennifer allowed herself to slam into the creature, sending it sprawling, catching the thing before it could complete its swing. The momentary repulsive feeling of rat hair against her cheek was worth the opening. The unlucky girl jumped to her feet and escaped, through the cargo area and into the Sector 8 Stairway.

**17**

The Sector 8 Stairway was free of the imps, rat or otherwise. Jennifer climbed the steps and entered the First Class Guest Sector—the Aristocrat Club.

She saw Amanda, the small-hearted Princess, far ahead, at the end of the hallway, depositing something into the gift box door. Probably her butterfly. As Jennifer approached the same door, she saw Amanda look into the now open door, look and be pulled in by whoever or whatever was on the other side.

_Pulled into the darkness._

The unlucky girl faced the same door and made her offering. She lifted the gift box's lid and slid the blue butterfly inside. Then she stood back, awaiting her response.

"I don't know..." someone said.

"Oh, why not?" another asked.

"What?" someone said.

"No!" someone denied.

"It's her first time," someone said in a whisper.

"Yeah, she's new," someone agreed.

"So... pass?" someone asked, confused by the consensus.

The gift box door slowly swung open. Jennifer grabbed the door, stepping around, cautiously looking into the other side. She couldn't really see anything and the darkness frightened her terribly—

She was so focused on the opening in front of her, she didn't hear the steps coming from behind her until it was too late. Suddenly someone jumped out, kicking her into the darkness of the Aristocrat Club.

Just as it was the first time, so it would be forever.

**18**

Jennifer tumbled down the steps and into the large hall room. She was greeted by a familiar sight, a sight from the orphanage attic room: two rows of candles lining a red rug, leading up to a layered structure of tables, all draped with flowing white cloth sheets and decorated with candles and rose petals. All of this focused around the two thrones. But of course, this time, the annoying boy from the bus was not here, and instead the aristocracy now reigned.

They were all seated leisurely in various locations amongst the throne construction, the various Princes that she had met earlier: Amanda, Diana, Meg, Eleanor, Susan, and Olivia.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Aristocrat Club," Meg cried from the center, the speaker of the club's agenda. In either side. Diana sneered. Eleanor finicked with the bird cage at her side. Amanda sat huddled, shaking from fear and excitement. "Thank you all for gathering here today."

Sitting on top of the structure, in the Princess of the Red Rose's chair was a doll garbed in a flowing red dress. The usual proxy.

Diana moved, lowering herself from her position to the left of the throne and moving toward the fallen unlucky girl. She swung her arms widely as she walked, imitating an official march. Jennifer remembered: she didn't like that she wasn't the Red Rose Princess. She didn't like not being the head, not being the one in charge, so she sometimes performed her duties with a sense of mockery. Well, it suited her arrogant personality so it was fine.

There was a jar sitting near the throne. It was absolutely stuffed with various colored butterflies—the gifts of all the aristocracy members.

When the strong-willed Princess stood before the unlucky girl, she curtsied in her exaggerated manner. Head tilted. Eyes brimming with unsaid cruelties. When this girl smiled, it could only be because someone, somewhere, was crying.

She kneeled before Jennifer, softly giggling, holding Jennifer's head between her hands. They stood like that for a few moments, Jennifer forced to look up into Diana's eyes, and Diana looking down into Jennifer's eyes. Candlelight flickering around them, the strong-willed Princess's small giggles framing their relationship as her light hands caressed the unlucky girl's face. Somewhere in there, their heart beats synchronizes, Diana's hands urged them to sway to some unheard rhythm. And then the moment changed—the unlucky girl could only see malice and the strong-willed Princess could only see terror.

"You're a disgrace," Diana said. She leaned away and began to swing Jennifer's face back and forth widely. "Nothing! Worse than nothing!" The unlucky girl could only bemoan her fear, but then the strong-willed Princess ceased her vehement violence. She steadied the girl and looked her in the eyes again. "Your gift is worth NOTHING!"

And at the last word, she threw Jennifer aside, slamming her into the rug. The unlucky girl looked up, staring up at the strong-willed Princess looming above her. And in her face there was not a single hint of friendship or benevolence. Not even the facade of it that she usually wore. Just contempt. Just anger. Just evil.

Then Diana smiled. The sight of the unlucky girl on the floor seemed finally to annoy her enough. She turned her attention to the small-hearted Princess. "Aman-da!"

The fat girl did not need to be called twice. Still in her whimpering, huddled state, she approached the strong-willed Princess, who pulled her close and patted her head. "There, there, there." Diana consoled as Amanda brimmed with tears.

Clapping. It started with one person. Meg clapping alone, calling out Amanda's name repeatedly. But then the action carried. Everyone began to clap. Everyone began to chant. Aman-da! Aman-da! Aman-da! The noise carried, spun, and soon it wall all anyone could hear. Amanda became the center of the Aristocrat Club.

And then, the small-hearted Princess was given the stick. The pole with the struggling, wriggling rat tied to its far end. Diana stood back, urging her forward. Amanda stepped forward with her awkward gait, unsure. She hesitated many times, but the chanting, the clapping—it urged her forward. She pointed the stick at Jennifer, held it above her head. The unlucky girl stuttered and cried, but she dared not run away. All she could see were the ugly rats beady eyes, its little arms grasping towards her.

The small-hearted Princess closed her eyes. But them opened them a moment later. She didn't have to close them to complete this task. She actually smiled with pleasure. She was the center of everyone's attention. Everyone's eyes were set upon her. In this moment, she was more important than beautiful Diana or the powerful Rose Princess. And everyone was chanting _her_ name. Clapping for _her_.

Amanda laughed.

Jennifer felt the hairy rat's body press onto her face. Its wet nose pressed into her cheek. Its small, sharp hands grasped her nostril and reached _inside_. It smelled awfully foul. Its pitiful squeaking cry muted the chanting and clapping. Its little heartbeat pounding away on her skin.

And as the small-hearted Princess laughed on and on, as the Aristocrat Club chanted on and on, as the strong-willed Princess stood back, sneering at the sight, the unlucky girl fell into a dead faint.

**19**

When the unlucky girl awoke, she was back in the strange room. Only now it was empty of the aristocracy, of Diana, or Amanda, or even the rat on the stick. Instead, the small boy in white from the bus was sitting atop the throne, reading a storybook.

When her movement made it obvious that she was awake, the boy looked down with knowing eyes and spoke to her. "Well? Do you remember now what a bad girl you were?" The boy giggled, the airship's metal wailing carrying on and on. "You haven't gotten your memory back yet, have you? Well, you've really done many, many bad things. You'll just have to remember them little by little! And when you fully remember what a bad girl you were, this game will end.

"Now, take your stupid dog and continue with our little game, dear Jennifer." And then the boy laughed and laughed and amidst this black sound, the unlucky girl felt her consciousness slip away. She hoped she would never find it ever again.


	3. May 1930: Sir Peter

**May 1930  
Sir Peter**

**1**

When the unlucky girl opened her eyes next, she found Brown staring at her. When the loyal hound saw that she was awake, its tail puttered away in excitement, it reached out and gave her a sloppy lick kiss. The unlucky girl cried foul, ringing her hands in disgust, but she was laughing. She couldn't remember when she'd been happier.

They were lying on the dirty matted floor of the Filth Room, metal groans of cylinders and turbines and propellers wailing away, far away. Jennifer tried to remember what had happened but stopped when the image of a screeching rat pressed to her cheek appeared so freshly, she could still feel its desperate little pulse pounding away. She leaned against the cold metal pillar, unsure again of how to proceed in this strange world...

And then, the Bucket Knight spoke: "... If memory serves me correctly, when you awoke, the fun had ended and the day was done. However, you're still just a beggar. The letter you received... That's your only clue."

_Letter?_

The unlucky girl checked her pockets but found no such item. But she didn't think the Bucket Knight had been wrong. Yes, a letter. That's what had happened next...

It was lying on the floor of the Filth Room, near the door. Scrawled in terribly messy handwriting on a floral print paper read: "I'm so sorry, Jennifer. Meet me where you can see the sky. Your friend, Amanda."

_Amanda my friend._

_ Amanda the considerate._

_Amanda the sycophant. _

Jennifer blinked. Now where had _that _thought come from? The small-hearted Princess didn't seem like a bad person. Sure, she was always tense and uneasy and maybe a little too eager to gain the approval of others, but the unlucky girl didn't think she was a bad person... Didn't she say they were friends?

_She was laughing away when she pressed that rat to my face. She wanted to do it. She wanted to be loved._

Jennifer blinked again.

Outside of the Filth Room, Jennifer realized that she wasn't sure where exactly it was that "where you can see the sky" which the letter referred to even was. Maybe one of the airship's windowed areas that looked out into the swirling sky? Maybe on the First Class Guest Sector, or maybe the Cafeteria...

As the unlucky girl walked along the Sector 8 passage, unsure, Brown trailed behind, digging its nose into the floral letter in her hand. When it caught the scent, it barked to gather the girl's attention before heading off, into the darkness ahead, with Jennifer following upon its heels.

In the Sector 8 Cargo Bay, Xavier, the gluttonous Prince, and Nicholas, the sloppy Prince were playing—attacking each other with brooms, mimicking a sword fight. They ignored the unlucky girl when she walked past, refusing to look in her direction. Secretly, Jennifer was relived. The brooms in their hands brought terribly fresh memories to bear; it was impossible not to think about the nasty imps swarming around her, swinging their brooms at her viciously.

Brown walked to a door and began pawing at it frantically. The unlucky girl was surprised; this door led to an area of the airship that they had yet to explore. She pulled open the sliding door and walked into the Sector 3 Maintenance, a small little passage that connects the Sector 8 and 7 cargo bays. It also had a rising metal stairway that cutoff into a ladder that descended into a shaking engine room, powering a throttling propeller. But Jennifer didn't bother exploring more of this area, instead opting to follow Brown's trail, into the Sector 7 Cargo Bay.

Inside was a larger area than the Sector 8 Cargo Bay, a large area devoted to the storage of the cargo. Boxes and crates were stacked and stored away, a large section in the center cleared away. A corner of the room was penned away behind fencing. Behind this fence, Thomas, the mischievous Prince, rocked back and forth in a jittery manner, taunting the unlucky girl, threatening to tell Mr. Hoffman on her. Olivia, the tearful Princess was standing near the center of the room, gazing at a chalkboard. It seemed to be a lesson on addition and subtraction. There were a series of example problems scrawled out, all of them solved correctly, except for one. Had someone been giving a lecture? When Jennifer turned to Olivia, to ask her, the tearful Princess ducked into her usual crouched position and said: "Mr. Hoffman is really scary when he's mad..." Then she started to weep hysterically. The unlucky girl listened to the pathetic sound for a while. She thought that, in that watery, baleful sound, she could hear Olivia crying out for her "daddy." Well, she had been the youngest. It was no surprise that she could still remember her parents...

Brown barked. The unlucky girl turned away from the sobbing girl and saw that Brown was directing her away, toward another door. But she felt bad about leaving Olivia crying alone. But it couldn't be helped—Olivia wouldn't stop her bawling until she had the attention she desperately wanted. And no one could give her that. Not anymore.

Sector 6 Maintenance was enormous; a huge expanse of space, larger than anything Jennifer had seen yet on the airship. But all of it constituted narrow passageways, leading off into unexplored darkness. Metal scaffolding support structures loomed out, supporting the passageways, the frame of the airship, and an elevator—

There was someone in the elevator. It was Amanda, the small-hearted Princess. She turned away and before Jennifer had time to call out to her, the metal elevator box was rising, pulling away from the unlucky girl.

**2**

When the elevator returned to the bottom floor, Amanda was no longer inside. Jennifer pushed the sliding door and stepped inside. The controls were simple, three buttons indicating a level: upper, middle, and lower. With more than a few misgivings, Jennifer pressed the button for the upper level. The elevator bucked, shaking harshly, before taking off, rising quickly, toward the unknown. Darkness surrounded everything. Every once in a while, a metal support pillar loomed out, a hanging rope swayed, Brown whimpered, terribly afraid of heights—the floor of the lift a frightening grating that was all too easy to look through.

Its ascent stuttered to a crawl eventually, coming to rest outside of a supported passage. A hanging ladder led upward, to a slit in the ceiling, beyond the airship structure. A red fire extinguisher was stocked here, just in case...

The unlucky girl comforted her dog. Brown licked her hand reciprocally—he wouldn't be able to follow her up the ladder. But she was sure that this was the place to which she had been called.

She climbed slowly, carefully, each step measured with care. The slit in the ceiling here was an awkward rectangle in the leather fabric tarp of the airship. Jennifer crawled out into frigid winds whipping around her, threatening to send her reeling if she wasn't careful.

It was a dark, starless night. Jennifer turned away from the wind, to the far end of the airship's tail, and, looking closely, saw that someone was moving against a faint light. A lantern was placed here, drawing her attention. As she approached, she heard the unmistakable sound of sobbing, masked by the howling wind, but becoming clearer the closer she got.

Soon, the unlucky girl could make out words amidst the trailing sounds of crying and wind: "I'm sorry, Jennifer. I'm sorry... I didn't want to do that. I was just so scared."

It was Amanda, the small-hearted Princess. She finally turned around from her sitting position next to the lantern, next to the airship's tattered tail end rudder. She kept her head bowed as she moved toward the unlucky girl and she actually tripped wildly, sending her sprawling on all fours. But this did not deter Amanda's efforts, squealing her tears, she crawled to Jennifer, moaning out her name in wretched moans: "Jenniferrrrr! Jenniferrrrr!"

The small-hearted Princess latched onto the unlucky girl's leg, pleading: "I did what I had to, didn't I?" She rose, grasping Jennifer's shins, her bare legs, the back of her knees, plump hands trailing upwards... "I had no choice. They would have hurt us both, wouldn't they?" Hands pressed to the back of Jennifer's thighs, her back, all the while looking down into Amanda's bawling face, cheeks smeared red with tears, puckered nostrils flaring—

Jennifer fell backwards, against the slope of the airship. Amanda crawled on top of her, heavy weight holding her down, one hand on her knee, one on her belly. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry..." The small-hearted girl took hold of the unlucky girl's hand, lifting it toward her face. "When it's my turn, don't think you have to hold back! Do it like this!" Amanda pressed Jennifer's hand into her cheek, spreading the fat, smearing her skin was tears and mucus. "And this! Oh! And this! And like this!" Swinging her head back, clutching the unlucky girl's wrist in her unyielding grip—Jennifer wanted to cry out her own terror and pain, but Amanda's sobs kept her quiet. All the while Amanda's breath became ragged and hitched, a sputtered, burning pitch.

Finally the small-hearted Princess let go, letting the unlucky girl's hand fall away. Amanda clasped her hands together and smiled at Jennifer: "We're still friends, aren't we?"

All the unlucky girl could see then was the booger sticking out of her left nostril.

"I know we're still friends, Jennifer! I trust you!" Amanda crawled up, climbing over Jennifer—her leg caught Jennifer's skirt, hitching it up. The unlucky girl closed her eyes, unsure and frightened of what might follow. Amanda pinned her arms down, her weight pressed over Jennifer's chest, their faces aligned against each other; Amanda's huffed breath buffeting Jennifer's lips, Jennifer's nose, and the taste, the smell, was disgusting. So the unlucky girl turned her face away from Amanda, face contorted in a grimace of distaste. And then—

And then nothing.

Jennifer waited a moment, confused. But when she couldn't feel Amanda's body on top of her, the unlucky girl opened her eyes and realized that the small-hearted Princess had departed from her and was standing further off behind her now, higher of the slope.

The unlucky girl turned to look at her. The small-hearted Princess glared down at her, huffing each breath. There were new tears in those eyes. Then she turned away, body hunched in her usual manner, and stuttered off, toward the flap in the airship.

And all around, the chilling wind screeched by.

Jennifer didn't see it but someone had been watching the encounter that had occurred here, under the starless sky. A certain strong-willed Princess with narrowed eyes full of malice and hate. Watching everything, eyes everywhere. When Amanda waddled closer, she descended out of sight.

**3**

Back inside of the airship, Jennifer and Brown entered the lift and pressed the button that denoted the lower deck. The ride back down was unremarkable if not a bit uneasy. Jennifer's mind was racing with her meeting with Amanda, Brown whimpered and refused to look down into the darkness.

The unlucky girl and her loyal hound traversed through the Sector 6 Maintenance Passage, through the large Sector 7 Cargo Bay (notably, crying Olivia and taunting Thomas were gone), through Sector 3 Maintenance, into the Sector 8 Cargo Bay area.

Here, Jennifer was sidetracked. She had intended to head directly upstairs, but a chugging sound she hadn't heard for a while pulled on her curiosity. She had heard it before as well, the very first time she had walked through here, but then she had disregarded it in favor of following the guideposts to the Aristocrat Club. But not now. Now, the unlucky girl pulled open the sliding fence gate and entered the Working Class Luggage area. And it was here, in this little secluded area, that Amanda worked, seated in a chair, facing a chugging sewing machine.

When she saw that the unlucky girl had entered, the small-hearted Princess turned in her seat and spoke: "Jennifer, I have a wonderful gift just for you!" The unlucky girl noticed that when Amanda spoke she made strange motions with her hands. Waving and thrusting and pointing. Always accompanied with a giggle. "It's almost ready, so please wait a little longer." Then she turned back to her machine, working carefully to sew the fabric she currently had on the needle plate.

There was something concealed under a cloth, behind the sewing machine, on an elevated area. It was about knee high and if Jennifer had to guess, it was probably the gift that Amanda had mentioned. Probably still incomplete. Secretly, the sight of it sort of bothered the unlucky girl. It was too easy to imagine another imp under that cloth. Maybe one of those nasty and quick ones with the rat head. Maybe it was just waiting for her to turn around before it would jump out and—

Brown whined at the unlucky girl's side and yanked on her skirt, trying to usher her away. Jennifer patted his head, letting the dog lead her away, out of the parted-off area. But not before she saw that there was something else in the elevated area of the room: a cabinet with a glass case, and inside, a single book...

Outside, in the Sector 8 Cargo Bay, a small, balled piece of paper flew out from the left and hit Jennifer on the shoulder. The unlucky girl looked around but she didn't see anyone. It was almost as if a ghost had thrown it.

_Yes, I was treated like a ghost at first. Back when, at the base of the hierarchy and ignored by everybody, this was the only way anyone dared to deliver messages to me..._

Jennifer scooped up and unraveled the paper ball. The message was short and simple: 'Amanda and Jennifer, report to the gift box at once.'

Behind the unlucky girl, the small-hearted Princess emerged from her sewing room. Nervously, the fat girl rolled her shoulders and said, "Too bad, but the gift will have to wait. For now, let's wish ourselves luck, Jennifer!" And then she ran off, giggling her little uneasy titter of a laugh.

Jennifer and Brown followed, into the Sector 8 Stairway. Here, standing in a corner, the impetuous Princess bustled about, complaining, "Peter smells like poo! He's so stinky, I don't want to touch him!" She was biting her nails, but she dropped her hand to deliver this last insult. "Stinky, stinky, go away!"

The unlucky girl didn't want to argue with her. She went away, up the stairs, and into the lavish First Class Guest Sector.

**4**

"EMERGENCY!," the gift box poster taped to the door proclaimed. "ONE-HORNED PETER RAN AWAY! CATCH HIM! CATCH HIM!" Strangely, the gift box was crushed, barely hanging to the door in broken planks. Did Peter escape, and is he responsible?

Unsure of what exactly is was she was supposed to do, Jennifer ventured from room to room in the First Class Guest Sector, asking the various occupants for direction.

In the Salon, Eleanor, the cold Princess, spoke to the girl in an even, emotionless tone. "... Peter should not be out of his cage..." The girl stood next to a grandfather clock, and above her head, a small red bird fluttered around, stopping momentarily to perch for a few seconds before moving on.

To say that the Salon was luxurious was an understatement. A vase of blood red roses sat atop a wooden table, between two comfortable looking couches. A record player sat, silent, before a large map that almost dominated an entire wall. The floor's carpeting was even more luxuriant than usual, culminating in dark patterns and symbols. A cabinet with drinks stood, undisturbed.

In the Library, Meg, the wise-looking Princess, clued Jennifer in. With an icy stare, the wise-looking Princess spoke, "Sir Peter has run away. Jennifer and Amanda, you are to find him immediately."

The Library was a mess—books were littered all over the place, spread open and in some places actually forming piles. And it was in one such pile that Amanda worked, bent over on all fours, digging through the texts, searching in the spaces between the tomes carefully. "Peter must be around here somewhere," she explained in gasping wheezes. "I'm sure of it!"

There was a portrait map hung on the wall. It depicted the continent of Europe, with various lines crisscrossing, and a few notably trailing southeast, toward Asia. For some reason, the unlucky girl got a subtle pang in her chest whenever she examined this map. There was also other portraits in the room—one of the airship and one of Mr. Hoffman.

In the VIP Room, Diana, the strong-willed Princess, snorted and commanded, "Now, hurry up and go find him! It's time for you peons to work!" Then she stopped, as if considering something, before laughing abruptly in the quiet of the room at a joke no one made. "Dawdle too long and Amanda will beat you to him!"

In a corner of the bedroom was an aquarium tank, next to a line of windows. It was empty of any obvious fish life, but there was a strange piece of decoration inside, amidst a concealing line of green water plants. It looked like an upside down building. No, on closer inspection, Jennifer thought that it sort of looked like the old mansion—the orphanage. But it was a strange thing to find here, on the other side of the looking glass, suspended underwater.

_We're in a giant fish, swimming in the ocean. No, swimming in the sky._

The unlucky girl remembered that unpleasant thought then, looking at the orphanage in the water.

_We're in an orphanage, swimming in the sky._

In the Sickroom, Jennifer found Wendy, the lonely Princess, tucked into the bed. She looked somewhat feverish, her breathing shallow and her brow was puckered. When she noticed that the lonely girl was present, she turned over and pleaded: "Mr. Bunny was taken by the Aristocrats... Please save him." Then, haggardly, she turned back, returning to her troubled rest.

There was a new picture hanging on the wall, next to the flying fish and rabbit. A drawing of a gingerbread house. It was a cheerful drawing with many wonderful sweets. But, something that looked like a pistol was in the middle of the house...

Jennifer actually made an effort to avoid the Sick Bay (she still recalled the terrible atmosphere she had experienced there on her first visit and she wasn't in a terrible hurry to relive it again) but a strange noise coming from the other side of the door when she walked down the hallway piqued her curiosity and drew her to drop to her knee before the door, peering into the keyhole, in a form that felt awfully familiar. And the sight she viewed on the other side of the door caused her to tip backwards, falling on her bottom.

Mr. Hoffman was seated at his desk, but he was surrounded on all sides by the creepy little imp creatures. They worked on him, binding him with ropes, tying his body in strange ways—around the belly, over the shoulder and under the arm, side legged and back arched, to the chair and walls. While the creatures worked and whispered their strange, nonsensical chant, Mr. Hoffman grunted and cursed and, occasionally, _laughed_. Clara, the frightened Princess, was nowhere in sight—

Suddenly, Jennifer's view of the terrible scene was blocked when a small, pale head blocked the keyhole, dark hole of an eye staring back through the hole, at the unlucky girl behind the door.

Jennifer did not wait around, she fled from the First Class Guest Sector as fast as she could.

**5**

The unlucky girl found Sir Peter in the Sector 8 Cargo Bay hallway.

When Jennifer approached, the bunny hopped away, scurrying down the passage, around the corner, toward the Filth Room. The unlucky girl rounded the corner, hoping to catch the rabbit in the dead end and put an end to this entire ordeal, but was surprised to find that Mr. Bunny was gone. Slowly, Jennifer walked down the passage, eventually reaching the end of the railed path that looked out into a dark drop and darkness.

Had the rabbit jumped off?

Again unsure, the unlucky girl opened the Filth Room's sliding door, intending to speak to the Bucket Knight and ask it for advice, but she was surprised to find a large man standing behind the door. The same large man who had given handed her the "Clover Field" storybook earlier. The same large man who's very sight made her want to scream and scream. Frightened by the suddenness of his appearance, Jennifer stepped back as the large man stepped forward, realizing too late that she had stepped into the same dead-end she had intended to capture the rabbit in. Now out of the room, the large man had the unlucky girl trapped and she was dreadfully aware of it.

"Joshua... I've written a new story for you," the large man with the stony-set face said, not seeming to recognize Jennifer's presence. Having said this, he turned and walked away easily enough, disappearing around a corner and out of sight.

And just like that, the encounter was over. The unlucky stood there, breathing deeply for awhile, regaining her composure.

There was a terrible smell coming out of the Filth Room. That is to say, it always smelled terrible (terribly _foul _of chlorine and detergents and other cleaning agents) but now there was a new aroma in the air. Sweet and sour, but not as sharp as usual. The taste of shit.

Jennifer coughed, covering her nose with her palm. Inside of the Filth Room, scattered profusely around the metal pillar which she had originally been binded to, were piles of little black pellets. Peter's droppings.

_How filthy... _

Disgusted by the rancid aroma, the unlucky girl wandered into the room, making sure to leave the door open, in a futile attempt to air out the room. She gave the prominent new piles of rabbit shit a wide berth, only to be surprised by another new addition to the room's decorations: drawings. They were done on the walls, red figures of people and a fish and squares and lines that dropped away from the ceiling. Also, the wooden coffin in which she had been thrown into and carried here in, with the brown sack, was tied with ropes for some reason.

And just as the large man with the blank face has said, there was a handmade storybook sitting in the back of the room, near the Bucket Knight. The unlucky girl picked it up and began to read:

**6**

" 'Sir Peter.'

"Sir Peter, Sir Peter, went out for a stroll.

"Sir Peter, Sir Peter, put in a cage, had to hold it in.

"Sir Peter, Sir Peter, needs to go right now, doesn't want to sin.

"Sir Peter, Sir Peter, bagged and whisked away, before he found a toilet. Good-bye, Peter, Good-bye."

**7**

Jennifer looked down at her feet, attention drawn by a sudden movement. Peter the rabbit looked up at her, from between her legs, little noses sniffing excitedly, before bounding off, behind her, through the open door. Face suddenly red with embarrassment—how had she _possibly_ missed him?—the unlucky girl chided herself, but stopped herself short of actually chasing after Mr. Bunny. She knew from experience that it would be a fruitless attempt. Once that rabbit started going, there was just no catching it. The only she was going to catch him was if he _wanted _to be caught and... And...

_And what?_

As if trying to remember a bad dream, Jennifer's thoughts, which an instant ago had been so clear and lucid, became tangled and unruly. Experience? What experience? Why had she hesitated in chasing wildly after the rabbit? She needed to catch him for the gift, she needed to catch him because Wendy wanted him, she needed to catch him before... Before...

_Before what?_

The unlucky girl was again stymied, but as so often was when she was in this state of mind, the Bucket Knight spoke: "... If memory serves me correctly, between you and the small-hearted Princess, the time has come to decide who shall be at the bottom of the ranks. Find and catch Sir Peter the rabbit... That's your only clue."

Yes... Yes, that was right. It was no use worrying herself with unnecessary thoughts now. She had to find the rabbit. Chasing after him wouldn't work, but she couldn't just let him wander off and get lost. She needed a way to track him... She needed Brown.

She thanked the Bucket Knight (who's bucket head shook in acknowledgement) before turning to her dog, and she was about to give it the command to track Sir Peter before she realized her next major failing: she had nothing to track the rabbit with. She stared at Brown, racking her head for idea, considering going to Wendy and asking her for something which might have Mr. Bunny's scent, before the dog barked to grab her attention. Motioning with its snout, it directed the unlucky girl to the mound of black pellets in the center of the room. Again, Jennifer felt embarrassed. Now had she forgotten _that_? She retrieved a bag from the shelves of laundry baskets and detergent bottles in the back of the room and (with closed eyes) scooped the bag full with the dry droppings.

With this in hand, Jennifer and her loyal hound left the Filth Room, hot on the heels of Sir Peter's trail, out into the Sector 8 Cargo Bay—

Something had changed. The unlucky girl looked around the corridor, noting that strange ropes had suddenly appeared, binded to all the walls, strung vertically, as if in attempt to hold everything together. These ropes has not been present when she had first entered the Filth Room, these ropes were very much new. And something else: hushed whispering. The strange voices she couldn't understand, the language of the _imps_. Deftly, the unlucky girl retrieved the paring knife from her pocket, readying herself for the worst case scenario: another nightmarish dash through the horrible little creatures.

And then she saw Sir Peter. He was waiting at the end of the passage, little beady eyes shining in the dark, but quickly hopped away, out of sight to the right. And of course Jennifer followed, the proximity of the rabbit temporarily causing her to neglect the sounds she heard all around her. The hushed chanting—

An imp jumped on the unlucky girl when she hurriedly turned the corner, latching on her front and clawing away at her, surprising her into dropping the paring knife. But there was something new: a new pain, a ragged agony on her side where the creature's white, furry head dug into her body—

_White, furry head?_

Jennifer could see more imps, a multitude of the little creatures swarming in on her, from down the hall, from the wider cargo storage area. These were your normal, run of the mill nightmarish apparitions. But the one struggling against her body, this one was different. Having lost her knife, the unlucky girl slammed herself against railing, the hand railing that served as a wall against the dark drop next to the corridor, to weaken the creature's grip before shoving it off.

Once it was writhing on the floor, she finally got a good look at the imp. Yes, it was no normal imp, like the ones slowly approaching down the hall. This one was special, like the rat imp from earlier. This one sported a large rabbit head on top of its shoulders, long white ears standing rigid, jagged front teeth capable of one nasty bite, and if it had managed to reach her so quickly, far ahead of the other imps' slow gait, it was undoubtedly much quicker as well. But Jennifer didn't stick around to find out, she fled away through the nearest door, into the Sector 9 Turbine Area.

Here, the incessant chanting of the imps was missing, so the unlucky girl assumed relative safety. Still, she didn't let down her guard (the operative word being _relative_). She walked forward cautiously, inspecting the room for imps, but did not see any. What she _did _see were more of the strange ropes she had seen in the other room, only these were tied around the turbine engine era around the center of the room instead of the walls.

_Sir Peter, Sir Peter, went out for a stroll._

Brown led Jennifer down the way, and the duo found Peter the rabbit sitting placidly in one of the four corners. Naturally, when they approached, he fled. But the unlucky girl and her friend followed the hopping rabbit around the room, almost in a full circle before he fled into the Sector 10 Crew Cabin.

Jennifer followed Brown's lead, into the center area of the room, with the single table surrounded by hanging bunk beds. The dog stuck its head under the table and began to bark wildly. The unlucky girl followed the dog's example and dropped to all fours, peering into the darkness below the table—

Mr. Bunny leapt out, over Jennifer's back, and away, toward the 3rd Passenger Corridor.

The unlucky girl rose, intending to follow, but was surprised when a horde of imps suddenly dropped around her from somewhere above, completely trapping her in place.

_Sir Peter, Sir Peter, put in a cage, had to hold it in._

While Brown barked and weaved around the creatures, trying to defend the girl from their assault, Jennifer climbed the table (her only possible refuge), kicking at the occasional imp that fared too closely. She needed a weapon, but she had dropped the paring knife earlier when the rabbit imp had surprised her. She rummaged her hands across the table's face, intending to use a wine bottle as a blunt weapon, but was surprised to find another weapon instead: a kitchen knife

With the new weapon in hand, Jennifer swiped at the nearest imps, forcing them back in threat of her deadly slash, finally stabbing the closest imp with the knife and managing to create an opening to flee between their forces. But the encounter cost the girl her new knife and once again left her weaponless, relegated to avoiding instead of fighting. Something which left Jennifer feeling incredibly vulnerable now that imps were appearing.

The unlucky girl and her hound retreated, Brown once again leading the way along Mr. Bunny's scent trail, down a hallway and into the Sector 11 Maintenance passage. Here, she entered and rested briefly in the noisy (but imp free) Generator Room, but moving on, back out to the maintenance passage and into the Smoking Room. Here they were ambushed by three imps (a quick rabbit imp and two normal imps with brooms) that they sidestepped easily enough before escaping out, into the 3rd Passenger Corridor that they had been forced to detour to reach. Here a single imp tried to impede their progress but they avoided it without any problems (Jennifer was getting better at that all the time).

And maybe that was the problem. The root of all of the unlucky girl's problems. Always avoiding trouble instead of tacking the issue straight on. Always running away from the problem, always sidestepping the issue, just because she didn't think she had the power to face those who bullied her eye to eye—

Brown led his master to the door of the Men's Lavatory, front paws raising to dig at the door's base. The unlucky girl opened the sliding door and in the two went.

_Sir Peter, Sir Peter, needs to go right now, doesn't want to sin._

Inside the bathroom, the hound let Jennifer to the second stall from the right. First, the unlucky girl tried knocking on the closed stall, but her only response was quiet and the occasional drip of water. The unlucky girl opened the stall, knife clutched, ready for the unexpected. But there was no danger. Sir Peter sat next to a toilet, and when the unlucky girl sighed her relief, the rabbit sped out, beneath her legs, out of the room. While she was in the lavatory, Jennifer caught sight of the mirror again, the one she had seen earlier, when she had been searching for a butterfly and Xavier was in here. The mirror that, for the most fleeting moment, reflected what had looked like an old orphanage. Yes, again she was struck by that feeling. Alice on the other side of the looking glass. Alice chasing the white rabbit into Wonderland.

The unlucky girl and her dog followed the white rabbit.

Back into the Sector 10 Crew Cabin (Mr. Bunny actually tried to hide underneath a bunked bed in one of the room's alcoves), through the Sector 9 Turbine Area (where two more imps dropped down from the ceiling but were easily avoided since Jennifer's paranoid eyes urged her to vigilantly watch the ceiling in case more imps tried this), into the Sector 8 Cargo Bay (avoiding the first rabbit imp she can encountered). Brown eventually led her to a door she had yet to explore: Middle Class Luggage. Inside was a room filled with shelves crammed with boxes, divided into three smaller areas by the lines of shelves. The loyal dog led Jennifer to the right of the room, into one such area, to a certain shelf that had a strange box that moved: jumping up and down. When she tried to grab the box, Mr. Bunny burst from the inside, hopping on the unlucky girl's shoulder and escaping away, out of the room.

This was all too familiar and Jennifer didn't like were this was all inevitably going. Seeing a rusted steel pipe laying in one corner of the room's floor, the unlucky girl picked it up, swinging a few practice swings. Maybe it was a little _too_ long and maybe it was a little _too heavy_, but Jennifer liked holding it in her hands all the same. It was something to defend herself with, something with the reach necessary to hold a distance between herself and any attacker. And it wasn't something with a sharp and pointy edge which only served her to maim and kill.

Again giving Brown the bag of dry rabbit pellets to sniff for the trail, Jennifer followed her loyal friend back out, into the Sector 8 Cargo Bay, through Engine 3 Maintenance, and into the Sector 7 Cargo Bay.

And here it was that the real nightmare began.

**8**

Blood. That's what the unlucky girl saw first, blood smeared on the floor of the Sector 7 Cargo Bay. Smeared in long, filthy streaks that sent shivers down her spine. She was afraid of the mess. She was afraid of what the mess would call... The bloody mess on the floor actually led away, behind a stack of items in the center of the room. Behind a stack of boxes and crates.

There was a strange sound in the room. A quiet sort of thumping. A sound that absolutely terrified the unlucky girl into a cold sweat, forcing her to grip her new weapon, the steel pipe, with shaking but thankful hands. She had heard this sound before—when searching for a butterfly to fulfill the gift requirement and Martha had been dragged off. And now here it was again. And now, it was coming from behind the stack of boxed in the center of the room.

The unlucky girl stepped around a pile of boxes, looking around a corner, searching for the source of the thumping. But a moment later, she would have given almost anything to forget what she saw.

_Sir Peter, Sir Peter, bagged and whisked away, before he found a toilet. Good-bye, Peter, Good-bye._

At the end of the bloody trail, in front of the fenced gate through which Thomas had mocked her so long ago, two imps beat on a brown sack mercilessly while a third used its broom to sweep the bloody floor. The creatures spoke in their incomprehensible tongue, smashing the bag that only gave a wet sort of smacking sound as a response. Eventually, they seemed to notice Jennifer because they turned in her direction and retreated from sight, behind the boxes, dragging their brooms after them. With the creatures gone, the unlucky girl finally moved from her position, toward the abandoned brown sack. Slowly, she approached the bloody bag, Brown behind her oddly subdued. She placed her hands on the sack and had a moment to consider its terrifying _warmth _before she heard the approaching footsteps.

Jennifer heard it—the imps were whispering in their strange unknowable language and someone was responding in affirmative grunts and humming tones. "Oh! Oh...Yes... " And it was then that the unlucky girl recognized the voice: Mr. Hoffman.

Looking around the corner, Jennifer saw that the imps surrounded Hoffman, who was looking around at them, bowing his head and listening. Listening and _comprehending_.

_Diana, Eleanor, and Meg are tattling on me._

Hoffman turned in the unlucky girl's direction and now Jennifer could see that his form was terribly bound with ropes. His legs were held rigid, one arm tied to his mouth, and his whole body seemed terribly tense, tied with rope around his belly, his head. Still he swung his pointer around angrily. "Why you... little rat... Jenni-fer! Did you make a mess again? This is unforgivable... You dirty, dirty girl..."

And all that Jennifer could do was mouth in horror as the binded Hoffman struggled in her direction, swinging his weapon angrily.

_Because I wet the bed again, because the others blamed Peter's disappearance on me, because, because, because..._

She didn't even try to avoid Hoffman's attack. The monster smacked her with his rod and toppled on top of her, sending both of them reeling to the floor. Above her, Hoffman grinned, laughing manically. He shifted his hips and pounded down, and the feeling was _horrifying_. Jennifer's body went cold, and suddenly she couldn't feel anything. This sensation, so familiar, so terrible, this weight above her, so frightening. The unlucky girl couldn't even cry out. Suddenly numbed, she could only exist as Hoffman shifted his hips a second time and humped down—

Brown jumped forward, biting down on Hoffman's face. The teacher screamed, arching backwards, and Jennifer, suddenly freed from her numbing paralysis, kicked outward, catching Hoffman right in the crotch.

Freed from the teacher's twisted embrace, Jennifer grabbed her steel pipe and crawled away, while Brown fought at Hoffman's heels, attacking the monster.

But unfortunately the hound's efforts were cut short. Hoffman struggled to his feet, and when it saw Brown holding it back by clutching his leg in its maw, it raised a single leg and stomped down furiously, sending Brown collapsing on the floor, without a whimper of protest.

And then, seeing her loyal friend hurt, Jennifer snapped. It was then that finally called out her friend's name in a cry of fury—of lament. Gripping her steel pipe with renewed strength, she lurched to her feet and lunged, swinging her weapon wildly. Hoffman was caught in an onslaught—a barrage of whacks and bashes that left the monster without a chance to counterattack. Or so it seemed at first, until he swung wildly and managed to knock the unlucky girl back, falling to the floor. And yet even this would not deter the girl's sudden anger. She sprung back to her feet and continues her brutal (albeit un refined) attack, each swipe of the pipe coming faster and harder. She didn't know she was crying. She didn't know she was screaming at Hoffman. As she could see was Brown laying on the floor, motionless.

She didn't know that the fury fueling her wrath now was one she would employ later, during her revolt of the aristocracy.

The unlucky girl brought the pipe down one last time, smashing into the teacher's forehead. And then his entire body became rigid. His head sprung skyward, snapping against the bindings, and he screamed, while his legs snapped, crunching beneath him. He fell backward like that, screaming into his hand, eyes bulging in terror. And then it was over, he collapsed, and blood seeped out from underneath him.

And then the imps were back, sweeping away, grabbing on to the fallen teacher's hands, cleaning up after the blood. They dragged Hoffman away, over the grating and out the door. The creatures were quick about their business, and soon, Jennifer couldn't even hear them.

Jennifer let them go. She was too busy with Brown. The poor dog lay unconscious on the floor, panting noisily. The unlucky girl waited patiently, never fidgeting, until Brown finally rustled, several minutes later. When the hound awoke, he found his master crying above him. Confused, he licked away her tears and she laughed. He never wanted to see her cry. She felt the same way about him.

**9**

There was a brown gunny bag laying on the floor of the cargo bay. Jennifer picked it up and found it to be warm. It was also terribly bloody and something was wriggling around inside... But she didn't look inside. She was sure it was Peter inside. She didn't need to see what he looked like after what the imps had done to it. Worse yet, it was _alive_, probably in terrible agony. She would just do as she was order, and return to the First Class Guest Sector—to the Aristocrat Club.

Back through Engine 3 Maintenance, through the Sector 8 Cargo Bay, into the Sector 8 Stairway, up the stairs, and into the First Class Guest Sector.

Amanda, the small-hearted Princess, was kneeling on the floor, in the hallway in front of the gift box door. When Jennifer approached with the bloody gunny bag, he eyes widened, her body racking in excitement. The small-hearted Princess spoke with her eyes on the bag in the girl's hands. "We did it! We make a great team!" Amanda giggled while holding out her hands, her fingers shaking with trepidation. "Hand me Peter! I'll give him to them for us."

The unlucky girl held the wriggling bag in her hands, uncertainty worming its way into the front of her mind. For the first time, she realized that she simply did not trust the small-hearted Princess. Of course she had known it in the back of her mind, but now it was a front and center conception. What right did she have to take Peter? After all, Jennifer had done all the work...

But before the unlucky girl had time to make up her mind, the gunny bag shuffled and fell out of Jennifer's hands, Peter the rabbit jumped out. His white fur was untainted with blood—he looked absolutely fine. He hopped around Amanda and proceeded down the hall, toward the now open gift box door.

Amanda hobbled after him, hurriedly. A girl chasing after the white rabbit in Wonderland.

When Jennifer approached the door, it swung open slowly. The unlucky girl went about opening this door slowly, carefully peering into the darkness, cautiously stopping to look behind, so that she wouldn't be kicked inside again. Finally, she stepped into the darkness of the room.

Brown did not follow.

**10**

The next thing Jennifer knew, she was walking through forest underbrush. Lush green leaves pulled at her sides, clinging to her rustling form. Crickets sung loudly all around, and far ahead, the unlucky girl could see a point of light, bright against the darkness of the woods.

~The forest seemed strangely familiar. In the dense woods, under the stars, a sacrificial ceremony was under way... Desperately fighting fear, the girl slowly approached the strange sight.~

Chanting. As Jennifer neared, the ritualistic chanting became discernible and understandable.

"Monday's pea was a sight to see."

Closer now, she could make out figures standing in a clearing. Girls standing before a set of chairs.

"Tuesday's pea almost made it free."

She could recognize them now; the upper class aristocracy: Diana with her rat stick, Meg with her rule book, Eleanor with her bird cage.

"Wednesday's pea didn't think to flee."

Candles were lit around the chairs. A gunny sack was on the floor before them and there was a strange machination attached to the trees around them. It looked like some kind of lift operated by pulley and rope. The girls chanted on, and the atmosphere was strangely subdued.

"Stray dog will have his peas..."

Someone grabbed Jennifer from behind and she almost shrieked. But it was only Amanda, the small-hearted Princess. She giggled, as she grabbed the unlucky girl from behind and pressed their faces together, cheek to cheek, to look at the ceremony from the shadows.

"Lower classes like you and me can't go up really close." Her hands slide under Jennifer's chin, stroking her mouth, and all the while she kept their faces pressed together—smile to frown. "We have to pray from a distance!"

The girls were working the lifts, Diana yanked on the rope, lifting the gunny sack up high, into the air. Jennifer had the sudden impression of seeing a hanging; an execution.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Aristocrat Club." Meg suddenly called out loudly, fulfilling her duty as speaker. "I wish to thank you for gathering here today."

The three upper class Princesses, the Countess, the Duchess, and the Baroness, turned around to the woods were the unlucky girl and small-hearted princess crouched, amongst the shrubbery.

"Jen-ni-ferrrr..." Diana called out, teasingly.

The unlucky girl shrugged off Amanda, called forward by the strong-willed Princess, she approached the clearing, hesitatingly stepping into the light, while the small-hearted Princess stayed behind, crouched and shivering.

Jennifer tripped, falling to her knees before the aristocracy. It was unintentional, but nonetheless done to good effect.

"May I have your attention..." Meg called, from the center of the three. "This is a message from the Princess of the Rose." The unlucky girl's eyes flashed to the chairs set up behind the three Princesses. The doll in the flowing red dress, the proxy, was seated there as usual. "The message reads: Jennifer, your efforts this month deserve special recognition. You managed to find Peter and will be amply rewarded."

Behind, in the forest, Amanda gasped. Her name had not been mentioned...

"Thus concludes the message from the Princess," called Meg, finishing her duty.

Diana strutted forward, head bowed, smirking. "Splendid work, Jennifer. You are no longer a wretched peon. Amanda, on the other hand, has been de-mot-ed." She let this hang in the air for a while, letting the two girls take it in, before she raised her head, calling out: "Aman-da!"

The strong-willed Princess offered the unlucky girl the rat stick, but Jennifer only shielded her face with her hands, as if instead she were being offered fire. Diana placed the stick in her empty hands and urged her forward: "It's time, Jennifer!"

Patiently, she waited as the unlucky girl turned around, toward Amanda, and then she began to clap. "Jen-ni-ferrr! Jen-ni-ferrr! Jen-ni-ferrr!" And the chanting picked up, first only her, and then the others were also clapping, also chanting. Also cheering her forward.

Amanda cried out her fear, stumbling backwards, shaking her head. Her eyes pleaded for mercy, for reprieve. Anything but the rat. She tripped on a root, falling backwards, and still she crawled away, terrified. Jennifer approached, rat stick readied, she motioned to push it out, into Amanda's face, as the small-hearted Princess had done to her, but... But...

But...

No.

The unlucky girl stepped back, moving the rat stick away. She couldn't do it. She couldn't do it, even if Amanda had done it to her. Even if the whole world chanted, she just couldn't—

Diana, realizing that she wouldn't comply, walked up behind her and kicked angrily, sending Jennifer falling, instinctively sending the rat stick forward, into the small-hearted Princess's face.

The gunny, burlap sack rocked to and fro. The aristocrat girls continued their chant. Amanda squealed out pathetically. And then the chanting was over and Amanda fell backwards, into a dead faint.

Horrified by what she had done, the unlucky girl stepped away, looking at the rat tied to the tip of the stick. It wasn't wriggling. It wasn't squeaking. It was dead. Little pale maggots squirmed against its rotting body.

_She had pressed _this _into Amanda's face._

And then Jennifer collapsed, sweet unconsciousness wiping away the horrors of her actions, the deathly silence of the forest, the staring eyes of the aristocracy, the swaying of the gunny bag in the wind.

**11**

The metallic groaning awoke the unlucky girl. Again, she found herself in the darkened airship's throne room, beyond the First Class Guest Sector's gift box door. The cruel boy from the bus was sitting high above, on the Prince's throne chair atop the clothed structure, reading a storybook. "Are you awake?" He called out, when the girl began to stir. "So, Jennifer, now do you know what a bad girl you were?" And then a moment passed, with Jennifer simply staring up at him, nonplussed. He seemed disappointed. "... Hmm, is that so? You still don't understand."

The boy motioned down. Around the throne structure, on the tables closest to waist level, there were three handmade storybooks. "Well then, I'll have you read these books... Hurry, hurry! Read another story Jennifer!" And then the cruel boy laughed his sickly, titter of a laugh.

The unlucky girl rose and moved forward, and found as she considered each of the three books (left, right, and center) that she was exceedingly tired. Her legs felt like deadweight and her mind begged to return to sleep, beyond the curtain of waking agony. The usual anger and scorn she felt for the haughty boy above her was tempered by her vertigo, and meekly, she listened to his request. Quickly, she moved to the left and picked up the storybook she reached, intending to read them from left to right, one at a time. This story was titled, "The Bird of Happiness."

Jennifer closed her eyes and began to read.


	4. July 1930: The Bird of Happiness

**July 1930  
The Bird of Happiness**

**1**

" 'The Bird of Happiness.'

"Once, a girl found a big box.

"The bird of happiness was inside.

"The bird would take her to Forever Land, or so she hoped. Each box was smaller than the last.

"In a cramped, dark space, she finally found her little bird.

"But it was far too little, and far too late.

"The bird was long dead. It had met a bloody fate. The End."

A page seemed to be missing, ripped out at the end of the storybook.

**2**

_~When the unlucky girl closed the storybook, she noticed that the cold Princess had entered the room.~_

Jennifer blinked. She was standing in the First Class Guest Sector's Salon, but the room had seemingly suffered a drastic interior redecoration. The couches and tables had been pushed away to the side of the room, tipped over—the floor was sprinkled with red, vibrant feathers. And it was here that Eleanor was crouched, beside the bird cage she usually carried around, repeatedly opening and closing its little sliding door. The cold Princess, notably, was dressed unusually; garbed in an airy white dress that hung limply from her underdeveloped body, one single foot bare without a sock—the regalia of a special occasion. The red bird the unlucky girl had seen in here earlier, excitedly fluttering around the room, was gone.

Finally, the cold Princess seemed to notice the unlucky girl because she turned her head and stood, speaking softly, "... The red bird." Then she picked up her empty cage, and walked out of the room briskly, sending a final, strange statement over her shoulder: "Have you found what you're looking for? Something dear to you...?"

And the airship rolled on, and on.

The unlucky girl sat down on the one couch that wasn't overturned and threw her head back, staring at the beautifully paneled ceiling. Brown jumped up and laid his head on her lap, licking her hand sympathetically. Her head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, her eyes strained and dry, and her heart pounded in a strangely jittery fashion. She plucked a feather from the couch and tried to focus on it, but had to stop after a moment. It looked too much like blood staining her fingers.

"... If memory serves me correctly," a voice suddenly spoke out from behind. Jennifer yelped and toppled off the couch, bringing Brown with her. Bucket Knight was standing unobtrusively behind the couch, in a corner of the room. "You've met the cold Princess and seen the empty cage she carries... She seeks what you seek. I know what it is... Yet, you forget. Remember your forgotten promise... That's your only clue."

The unlucky girl grabbed a cushion from the couch and chucked it half-heartedly at the scarecrow. What kind of useless advice was that? She felt as lost as ever...

Jennifer left the Salon, entering the First Class Guest Sector hallway, but ducked away out of sight against a corner. Down the passage, in front of the gift box door, the strong-willed Princess and the wise-looking Princess were talking... The unlucky turned and leaned against the corner, discretely listening in on their conversation.

"She doesn't seem to be skittish at all, Diana."

"You're right, Meg. We had better push her a little harder."

Who? Who were they talking about? Jennifer? Or maybe...?

"We'll discuss the details later."

"Okay. Let's meet at our secret place."

Laughing, the two girls ran down the hall, past where Jennifer hid, toward the Sector 8 Stairway.

She almost didn't see it, but something small slipped off from Diana's shoulder as she passed by. A tiny, red thing that drifted to the floor in slow little arcs. A feather.

Jennifer picked it up from the floor, pincering it between two fingers. She herself probably had a few of the red feather stuck to her clothes (she had sat on the couch littered with them), but what did it mean that Diana also had had a feather on her? The red bird, Eleanor's bird, those two... They wouldn't...

The gift box door gave the unlucky girl another thing to worry about: "THIS MONTH'S GIFT: BIRDIE OF HAPPINESS." The posted message was taped over the previous month's gift signs, and the gift box itself had been reassembled, taped together into a shaky, fragile square.

Jennifer could already feel it, looking at the red bird drawn on the gift box poster. Events were proceeding grimly and the past and future were set. Her premonition was simple: this would not end well.

But what ever does?

**3**

The unlucky girl figured that Diana and Meg were her best bet for a lead in her search for the missing bird. She held out the crimson bird feather that Diana had dropped to Brown and allowed her loyal friend to lead her, down the Sector 8 Stairway and into the Sector 8 Cargo Bay. And here it was, walking into the hall passageway, that Jennifer saw that someone had drawn red birds along the passage wall, leading to the Sector 9 Turbine Area. Fluttering red birds, up and down and all around. Always out of reach, always leading her on—the free-flying bird.

And maybe that was something that Eleanor and the unlucky girl had always had in common—they always followed others around blindly; the rules others set, the expectations others gave them.

As Jennifer walked down the passage in the Sector 9 Turbine Area, she was sidelined when a door on the opposite side of the room opened and the cold Princess in her white dress and single naked foot walked out of the Starboard Livestock Room, murmuring. "No, it's not here either... The red bird... Where did it go...? The red bird..."

And, just like each other, they each gave up their special friends so easily when asked by others...

The girl did not stop to speak with Eleanor. The cold Princess swayed where she stood, head lolling back and forth slowly, and she appeared sick and lost and disoriented. The mere sight of her like this frustrated the unlucky girl. Frustrated because looking at the cold Princess like this was like looking into a frosty mirror. So no, the unlucky girl did not approach Eleanor (who already, was wandering off, dazedly).

She couldn't stand to look at her face.

Instead, she followed Brown into the Sector 10 Crew Cabin, along the passage graffitied with happy little birds, into the 3rd Passenger Corridor. And here red bird feathers were thrown about on the floor, down the corridor, forming a trail that begged to be followed. And as she walked down the way, more feathers began to drift down, slowly from above. At the end of the corridor, the crimson feathers were piled up the metal stairs, toward the "Clover Field." Upstairs, in the Guest Room Hall, the trail of vibrant feathers thickened, crossing to the one-leaf clover door. Beyond this sliding door, in the 2nd Passenger Corridor, the path was so strewn with feathers that it was almost completely red. Walking down the corridor, first straight, then left, then left and left again, while the streaming feathers descended all around, reminded Jennifer of her pursuit of the mysterious blue butterflies earlier.

The red trail ended in the Women's Lavatory.

The darkened bathroom was familiar. Wet and depressing and subdued. The abundant trail of feathers turned into a thin track, led along by the odd feather and dark drop of stained blood, across the cold floor to the middle bathroom stall.

Jennifer, terrified of what she might find on the other side, grasped the handle and pushed the door open, lower lip pressed with apprehension. Above the toilet, on the wall, another red bird was drawn, holding a fork and knife. Above it, a horrible smear was splattered, trailing downward, to the bird. And the unlucky girl was horrified by the very real possibility that it was blood.

_The bird of happiness devours the blood of the hopeful._

_ The bird of happiness is a scavenger. _

_ The bird of happiness doesn't bring happiness at all._

Someone was coming.

Jennifer ushered Brown into the open stall with the gruesome stain, quickly closing the stall door.

"Over here!"

It was the strong-willed Princess and the wise-looking Princess. They ran into the lavatory, trying to subdue their spasms of laughter, and opened the stall next to the one in which the unlucky girl hid. Suppressing their giggles, they shushed each other and stepped into the stall, into their secret place, closing the hanging hinged door behind them.

Jennifer hugged Brown, absolutely terrified of what the aristocratic girls would do if they discovered her here, listening in on their conversation.

"You know what, you know what?"

"What?"

"I don't like her, I'll never get along with her. No chance! Not ever!"

That was Meg. But who was she talking about? It was Jennifer, right? They were cursing her behind her back again, right? They couldn't possibly be talking about...

"She's such a pain!"

"Just terrible!"

"I can't stand the sight of her!"

And then, as Jennifer crouched in the stall, desperately holding on to her loyal hound in the dark, she listened as the conversation of the two girls turned from coherent speech into inarticulate giggling and breathing. Occasionally one would hush the others. But the atmosphere was suddenly so rampant with electricity that the unlucky girl suddenly wished she were somewhere else, anywhere else, because listening to these naked sounds seemed like a sin.

And then the talking resumed.

"Yes, she had it coming."

"Yes, she deserved it."

"Are we too cruel?" the strong-willed Princess asked, laughing.

"Heavens, no!" the voice of the wise-looking Princess immediately chimed in.

"You're right, it's her own fault!"

And then they were gone, their sordid giggling transformed into obscene cackling as they burst from their stall and fled from the room.

**4**

"Eavesdropping, eh Jennifer?" the strong-willed Princess said. "What a bad girl."

Outside of the women's lavatory, Diana and Meg blocked the corridor way, glaring accusingly at the unlucky girl, who froze, discovered in her snooping. Frightened, Jennifer looked back and forth between the two, body tensing for the punishment that was assured to follow.

"I know what you're doing... You're looking for the bird of happiness, aren't you?" the wise-looking Princess said. "It's in a room nearby, but I don't remember the room number..."

"The bird will die if we don't hurry," Diana said, "and that will make Eleanor cry."

Meg turned to the strong-willed Princess, shaking her head, frowning. "No, I bet she'll be furious. She's going to go insane."

Diana snickered. "Then, let's make a wager... on whether she'll cry or get angry..."

"It's a bet!" Meg declared.

And then the two girls turned and walked away, leaving the unlucky girl, who couldn't believe her sudden luck at being left without punishment.

Poor, unlucky girl. She should have known there was no such thing as luck for her.

**5**

After wandering around the corridors for awhile, Jennifer got a hint in the form of a song. Along a corridor lined with windows, she heard the quiet sound of a bird singing. The music led her to a Cabin Room 26.

Inside the cabin, Jennifer did not find the bird of happiness... but she did find a large safe box labeled "Land." Beside this, there was a sketch on the floor of an island with trees and rivers. It's legend was simple: "Land of the birds. Population 834."

The unlucky girl looked from the sketch to the safe, back and forth, finger trailing the word "Land" on the page. Well, Jennifer huffed, this wasn't exactly a mystery deserving of Sherlock Holmes, now was it?

Jennifer inputted the numbers 8-3-4 into the safe's dial and it opened readily enough. But instead of delivering the bird she had expected, the unlucky girl only found another, smaller safe box inside. This one labeled "Village." The safe box was accompanied with a torn strip of paper that seemed to be half of a graph entitled: "Birdie Town Major's Dietchart." The girl groaned, remembering the storybook's line about finding a series of boxes inside of boxes. This might take a while.

**6**

As she walked, the unlucky girl found that she had time to think. Disjointed thoughts danced around the periphery of her mind, the blind whispering of a hushed child.

Sometimes, Jennifer thought that Eleanor was the strongest person at the orphanage.

Brown led Jennifer into a disgustingly defunct looking shower room. Many of the stalls were boarded up and grafittied with strange numerical symbols. In one of the stalls (a stall which seemed to be out of order and missing its showerhead and faucets), the unlucky girl found the second half of the diet chart which revealed: "this morning's weight: 124 kg."

The cold Princess was not strong because she was knowledgeable, like Meg—or fierce, like Diana... The cold Princess was strong because she was a mystery. An unsolvable enigma. A high ranking members of the aristocracy. An indifferent expression of apathy. Neither hate nor love. Just cold indifference, and maybe that was the strongest attitude of all.

Back in Cabin Room 26, the unlucky girl input 1-2-4 into the "Village" safe. The smaller safe inside was not titled "Family," and the accompanying scrap that served as a hint was a series of descriptions: "Daddy is/Mummy is." But whatever it was that daddy and mommy were was impossible to decipher because the rest of the message had been smeared away by a dark red liquid.

But the cold Princess was not without emotions or desires. Eleanor was not without hope. Eleanor wanted to be happy. Eleanor loved her bird.

In Cabin Room 15, Jennifer found the second half of the description list scrap on the floor. Combined together, it seemed to be creating some sort of symbolic arithmetic equation: "Daddy + Mummy + Daughter = Family?" But it seemed that this hint was still missing a third segment—a part of the message was still unreadable.

And because the cold Princess had hope—hope for the bird of happiness that she thought would lead her away—the unlucky girl thought that she was ultimately the weakest person at the orphanage. Fragile. Eleanor was always melting. Always easily melted by the passions and fiery desires of others.

Brown led Jennifer into a stairway area. The unlucky girl followed as her friend led her upwards, over a series of steps that culminated several stories. A pathetic whistling resonated within this barren area and soon Jennifer found the source: Susan, the impetuous Princess, stood atop a chair, whistling over the side of a railing, trying to signal to the bird of happiness. "... Why won't the birdie fly to me?" Susan asked no one in particular, before turning to glare at the unlucky girl. "... Why does it have to be you? Stay away! I said stay away!"

_A little birdie told me your parents hated you._

_ A little birdie told me that no one loves you._

_ A little birdie told me what you did to the bird of happiness..._

The unlucky girl ignored the impetuous Princess and continued on, up the stairs. Pathetic whistling following her all the way back.

**7**

The stairway opened into Central Stairway C, and it was here that Jennifer was attacked by the bird imps. They were towering figured wrapped in sacks, large, thin mock bird heads tied to their tip, little sallow legs sticking out from underneath, struggling to waddle forward under the weight and constraint of their avian guise.

They jumped out at the unlucky girl, a horde of them, hooting a terrible mimic of owls before swooping downward to smack at the unlucky girl with their sharp beaks. They clamored eagerly forward, trying desperately to get at Jennifer. But they were slow and immobile, tripping over each other as they hurriedly shuffled forward, caught in their momentum, but a few managed to jump far enough to stab the unlucky girl as she scurried past. To her horror, they managed to draw blood wherever they made contact with her skin.

The unlucky girl chased after Brown, who had escaped down a dark suspended passageway. She didn't like the dark, but it was a million times preferable to remaining here and becoming human bird feed to the jostling imps. So Jennifer followed the dog down the dark way and she ended up tripping over her loyal hound when it stopped unexpectedly. The last scrap of the hint was lying here, on the passage floor. The unlucky girl retrieved it and put it together with the rest of the scraps, hoping to find the "Family" safe's opening combination. But, to her disappointment, there was no final answer. Instead, the final scrap added two colored birds to the bottom of the sketch, totaling three birds: an orange Daddy, a green Mummy, and a yellow Daughter.

But the unlucky girl was no closer to the three digit number that she needed, and from behind her, in the direction of the stairway area that she had entered from, she could hear the approaching scurry of little imp feet coming forward, accompanied by excited hooting.

She had to go back.

She patted Brown's head for courage, and the loyal friend snugged its head against her side, sympathetically. And then, she was running.

Down the dark corridor again, through the hooting bird imps which moved around her and swung down on their front desperately, hungry to catch her with their mock heads. But the unlucky girl's fear gave her steps a vital bounce and her terror fueled her fight-or-flight response. She chose to fly—and so like a bird, she dove between the imps, moving in quick diagonal turns and twists to avoid them.

_Fight-or-flight. _

_ Flying is running away._

_ Chasing after the bird of happiness is to give up on life._

Suddenly, Jennifer had a fleeting image that chilled her to her core. She imagined that she was feathered red—that she _was _Eleanor's red little bird, and that the imps around her were the children at the orphanage, grasping desperately at her, trying to catch her and offer her up for the monthly—

And then the unlucky girl was pushed to the floor. Dazed, she glanced up, and realized that she had run smack into a bird imp. But this one in particular was not like the others. This one was larger and darker, with something that looked like wired spikes running along its neck. Jennifer looked up, at its mock bird head, and became lost in its black eyes. It was silly. They weren't real. They couldn't be. They had been drawn on with crayon. Each of the bird imps had a single dark line to indicate a closed eye.

But when the unlucky girl looked into this imp's mock head, its drawn eye sprung open. And in this impossible pupil, she could see hate. The most pitch black hate in the world, all for her.

The large bird imp dove.

Jennifer screamed.

Brown saved his master, the loyal hound leapt at the imp, sidelining its trajectory and sending it crashing into the side, missing the unlucky girl completely.

Jennifer crawled away on all fours, finally reaching the stairway. She bounded down the steps eagerly—too eagerly. She ended up rolling down the last half. But she was safe, the bird imps could not follow her down the looming stairs.

At the base, she grappled for Brown, unable to see him through her tear stricken eyes. She held her friend like that for a long time, until her nerves returned, and her quiet weeping stopped.

**8**

It was the cold Princess who finally gave the unlucky girl the hint she needed. And when she finally saw it, she almost smacked her forehead for not having seen it earlier.

Eleanor was standing in the 2nd Passenger Corridor, looking at a wall. "That's not the right color..." she said. "It's a RED bird..."

Jennifer joined her side and realized that she was looking at a stylized purple bird colored into the wall. Below it was the number 37. Confused, the unlucky girl looked along the corridor walls and was surprised to find that there were more of the colored birds drawn with accompanied number. A yellow bird with 45. A blue bird with 16. An orange bird with 55. And a yellow bird with 12.

And then it was obvious. The family sketch paper that she had reassembled had come into a form of an addition arithmetic problem. The orange Daddy + the green Mummy + the yellow Daughter = Family. All she had to do was take the numbers that accompanied the colored drawings on the walls, add them together as instructed on the torn hint, and she would have the combination for the "Family" safe box. It was so obvious, it hurt her pride a little to have missed it for so long.

The unlucky girl input the numbers 1-1-2 into the safe box. She pried open the lid, but again was met with a smaller box tucked inside the larger safe. This time, the shredded hint was a newspaper article from the Daily Flamingo that read: FAMOUS COUPLE TO DIVORCE? Man swipes 60 pounds from Wife's 365-Pound Bank Account."

Brown led Jennifer away from the 2nd Passenger Corridor and into the 1st Passenger Corridor. The dog began to paw the door for Cabin Room 9. Distractedly, the unlucky girl remembered that this was the dark room in which the disembodied voice of a witch had spoken to her—

Jennifer shrieked. Inside of the lit room, a large supple body was hogtied with thick ropes, squirming helplessly on the floor. Disgustingly bloodied, the face was obscured with a thick sack, but it was impossible to not tell that it was Martha who gasping for ragged breaths from the floor. She didn't seem to hear the unlucky girl's approach, but she shuddered away when Brown began to dig its nose into her side.

Slowly, Jennifer tiptoed into the room, carefully approaching the injured housekeeper. Finally, she could see what Brown was trying to direct her attention to: stuck between the ropes that bound Martha and made her helpless was a newspaper. She couldn't bear to touch Martha, so she dropped to her knees and twisted her head to read the prominent article: "July 1930 Daily Flamingo. Husband 'Borrows' yet Another 30 Pounds from Wife's Bank Account—"

\ Martha gave a quiet little sob.

And then Jennifer was gone. She couldn't bear any more; the unlucky girl bolted from the room, back toward the 2nd Passenger Corridor. Inside of Cabin Room 26, she did the math and inputted the numbers 2-7-5 into the "Couple" safe box.

The top lifted open to reveal the smallest box yet, with the caption: "Alone." But this was not a safe box like the previous boxes had been. This was simply a box—its contents readily available without any form of protection. It was Eleanor's clothes, her usual amber-brown dress with rose hem detail on the skirt.

Jennifer reached inside, confused, and lifted the folded clothes. There was a bundle inside. The unlucky girl unfolded and revealed the dark secret: a lifeless red bird, tucked away inside of the cloth.

Footsteps from behind.

Jennifer gasped and turned around—the cold Princess stood at the door, her cage in her hand, the little bird seat inside swinging longingly.

Eleanor entered the room, her white dress hanging limply from her body, still wearing only one shoe. Her apathetic eyes surveyed the room in a slow drawl before finally coming to rest on Jennifer and the dead creature in her hands.

The unlucky girl tried to explain. "It wasn't me," she said. "Honest!"

From behind Eleanor, outside of the cabin room door, Diana and Meg's heads appeared, peeking into the exchange, their eyes afire with a sadistic glee.

The cold Princess approached Jennifer slowly, and the unlucky girl didn't know what to expect.

Eleanor's hand sprang out and quickly grabbed the dead bird by its hind feathers. She reached down and opened the bird cage's sliding door before flinging the dead animal inside. Then, without so much as even a word of accusation or anger, she turned around and marched out of the cabin room and into the orphanage hallway.

The unlucky girl and her loyal friend followed the cold Princess as she made her way through the small hallway, past a scuttling rat, up the stairs, and into the dusty attic. Past Diana and Meg, past windows where luminous moonlight filtered into the aged room, and right up to the broken gift box door which hung pathetically, held together with tape.

Without any hesitation, Eleanor reached into her cage, retrieved her precious bird, and threw it into the gift box.

Diana smiled and shrugged from around the corner. Meg mimicked her action and shrugged too.

The gift box door opened and the cold Princess stepped through. Quickly, the strong-willed Princess and the wise-looking Princess followed her through the portal, pausing only to give the unlucky girl fleeting smug smiles that they dropped as soon as they turned back to Eleanor.

And then the cold Princess slammed the door in the unlucky girl's face.

**9**

Jennifer blinked awake.

Again, she found herself in the First Class Guest Sector's Salon with its furniture in a state of upheaval and turmoil—sprinkled red feathers still littering the floor.

From the corner of the room, the Bucket Knight spoke again: "...If memory serves me correctly, you've finally found a piece of your previous oath... Now, weave together the memories that shall server as your beacon of light. Your beacon of light..."

Well, Jennifer did feel as if she were on the verge of remembering something truly important. She looked around the room and on the couch found Eleanor's usual amber-brown dress, and tucked underneath it was a long slip of paper. The missing page from the "Bird of Happiness" storybook.

**10**

" 'The Bird of Happiness.'

"Once, a girl found a big box.

"The bird of happiness was inside.

"The bird would take her to Forever Land, or so she hoped. Each box was smaller than the last.

"In a cramped, dark space, she finally found her little bird.

"But it was far too little, and far too late.

"The bird was long dead. It had met a bloody fate. The End.

"The moral: everlasting happiness is a joke."

**11**

The last line, added with the new found slip of paper, swiped at Jennifer's mind eagerly. The word, "everlasting" in particular seemed to wriggle every time she read it. It seemed important. No, more vital than even that, it simply needed to be.

_~The unlucky girl remembered the promise she made to her dear friend... and so she wrote it on the chalkboard, so she'd never forget it, ever again...~_

Yes.

Feeling that this was something she couldn't afford to forget again, the unlucky girl approached the Bucket Knight in the corner of the saloon and used a piece of chalk to write a word on the chalkboard at his base: "everlasting."

And then Jennifer slipped away from this dream.

**12**

The grinding of gears, the wailing of machinery, and the creaking of metal was the greeting that awoke the unlucky girl again. She had been brought again to the darkened airship's mock throne room, surrounded by candles on all sides, and faced with the cruel boy seated atop the high throne chair.

"Good morning, Jennifer!" he called down to her. "Do you remember anything new?" But he quickly seemed to become disappointed with the unlucky girl's confusion. "... Hmmm, I see. You remember one of them. But, that's still not good enough." He reproached her scornfully. "You're such a silly girl!

"Hurry! Hurry!" the cruel boy began to urge her. "Read the story, Jennifer!"

And then he laughed his husky little jostle of a laugh.

Jennifer arose from the red carpet and saw that there remained two more storybooks laid upon the mock throne. She chose quickly, the storybook in the center, directly beneath the cruel boy. This story was titled, "The Goat Sisters."

Unaware even to herself, a new desire had appeared within the unlucky girl. The desire to remember whatever it was that she had forgotten. She did not want to be like Eleanor—an undecipherable enigma; she did not want to be weak. She wanted to understand herself, she wanted to be truly strong.

Jennifer closed her eyes and began to read.


End file.
